the first time I saw it

When I saw the house after the hurricane, for the first time, I had painted a picture in my head that was way better than reality. We knew the house had flooded. My dad had seen the house. He didn't make it seem so bad. After all, he had nothing left to his execept a handful of pieces of bricks and a floor tile or two. I thought, "Hey, we can mop this place out, and clean it up really good." But the second we peered inside, I knew it was something worse than that. Hardly anything was salvageable. The fridge had been knocked over by the water. Sofas were tossed around like toys. Things from my closet door, which had been closed inside my bedroom, which had a closed door before the storm were now at the front door. One of my certificates was stuck on the floor. It had traveled from my room to the living room. But that didn't matter now. It never really did. That meant nothing. Pictures were mush. Collectables broken. Everything left was destroyed by this stench that I don't want to smell again. It wasn't fair. It didn't seem real. It still doesn't. So whenever I hear a really spoiled person complaining about something minute, these images flood my head. Does it matter? No. Did it ever matter? No. People have a way of assigning value to possessions, to things to prove their worth/value. For me, it was a collection of awards I had. When I saw these things tossed about and unsalvageable, rage filled within me - towards an inanimate object - something I could never look in the eye and say that you hurt me. Something I would never see. Something I could never talk to. Something I would never forget. Something finally taught me that my worth is not judged in awards or how well I do because in the face of a natural disaster, it didn't matter. It never did. As my dad said, "We are in survival mode, now." Life, food, water, shelter - those things matter in this life. Advice is so easy to dispense but so hard to take. Sure, it is easy for someone to say, "It's just things. They don't matter. At least you are alive." Yeah, life is good, but it is a heck of a lot easier for you to say that while lost nothing. I liked my things. I would not have had them if I didn't. You think about losing your home and get back to me about how that would make you feel. You think about the guilt of things left undone and things you can never rectify and reflect. I guess something like this makes life easier in a sense. You don't really worry about the little things as much. Grades seem like just a letter on a paper not hardly worth a second glance. Who cares what people think? That's not really what matters. It never was.