Every Day In May: Day 12 - Van, Texas.

On the night of Mother's Day, a small East Texas town called Van experienced an EF-3 tornado. All of the surrounding cities, including us, all had the warnings. I'm sure most, if not everyone, was watching the news. We all heard the same thing. We all heard to take cover in a windowless room "just in case".

The past couple of weeks have been hell on my city and the others around it. It seems like nonstop rain, nonstop tornado warnings, nonstop power outages, and just nonstop hell. It has been about 5 day sequence of storms and tornado warnings. The rain still isn't over. We have the weather forecast predicting thunderstorms until the end of this week, but how much more can we exactly take? We have homes that are non-existent, we have roads that have washed away, we have loved ones that have past away all because of this shitty weather. I can very easily say "I'm glad to be leaving here." Other's are less fortunate and have to leave here because their town was ripped apart. Even when I leave here, it's not going to take the worry away that I have for my family and friends that stay here.

It's really scary how close to home this tornado hit. It's one of those things that we think about and we say "oh, it wouldn't happen to us." We didn't even take precautions because that's how strongly we felt about "it wouldn't happen to us." And while it didn't happen to me personally, it happened to our neighboring city and a lot of the people I know are personally affected by this. To be honest, I feel like I can't even be sad about it, but for some reason I am. I'm not trying to put my sadness over the ones that live in Van or the ones that lost someone because of this tornado. They have much more reason to be sad. They lost their homes, their jobs, their cars, their loved ones.

I'm donating a lot of Raleigh's things that I was going to sell to have some more moving money. They need it much more than I do. They don't have anything and they don't have a way to get anything else like Josh and I do. It's the most I can do and it still doesn't feel like enough.

I can't really say Pray for Van like everyone else has, but I will say that my deepest thoughts are with those in, around, and affected by Van. I'm going to do what I can and I hope that everyone else can do what they can to help those in need. I've never seen my town as caring as I have seen them the past couple of days. Maybe some people do have a heart.