Rebuilding what the fire took from us.
My name is Jess, all that I want is for my boys not to feel like they’ve lost everything we’ve worked so hard to have.
I know this is a longer story , I am still not sure what to say or how to say it.
Friday evening I decided to take my oldest son down to the beach to have a waterfront dinner, it was our first date night just the two of us in years. It was a way of celebrating, celebrating The project I had just acquired for him but more so it was our celebration for making it. As many of you know my marriage ended in not the nicest way and Mike is gone. I had gotten more work in the last month and we were more than stabilized! I was spending even more time with my children because there was no one there to shed their input or negativity. He smiled and laughed and we took pictures and made sure to order extra food so we could stay up late and eat leftovers more than once. I pulled up to my house, nothing seemed off. As I unlocked my door, I didn’t open it to find a healing frequency and lavender essential oil‘s defusing. I opened my door and was consumed by a wall of smoke, I took a few steps in to see if I could find where it was coming from and then I backed out, terrified . In shock I realized kitten was in there. Immediately I ran to my bedroom apparently around a wall of fire I couldn’t even see , The first place I looked right underneath my bed I found her. Far too late. When I got her out of the house of course I called 911. I don’t remember any of the time between the wall of smoke and when firefighters and EMTs arrived. They tore the house apart and made sure the flame was gone and begged me to leave and stay somewhere else for the night, of course I refused and sent my son off with family to hopefully sleep away this event while I try to figure out if this is real or not. I still can’t feel it fully, looking at the house in the dark with inches of water on the floor with the ceiling hanging so low that you have to walk around it, I convinced myself it wasn’t that bad. I convinced myself it was just the TV that was ruined and my rugs. No big deal . I don’t care who started the fire or what did. Unfortunately there is an investigation that has taken place and I had to meet several people at my home the very next morning. Opening that door again, the wall of smoke gone ,as I ’m listening to these officials and listening to the severity and finally seeing my home in the light. My home was so well insulated that the fire only damaged so much, The heat that was kept in the house is what ruined everything. As we step through water and they show me my microwave melting off of the wall and the beach towels that have melted into the game room sofa and the dish soap bottle that is a pile of plastic above the kitchen sink. I go to my children’s room and I looked through their clothes and toys, their possession , everything is black, everything is melted, everything is stuck in place right where it was when the heat started. I had grabbed a few items that I thought couldn’t possibly be that damaged and as I am washing the blanket that my son loves for the seventh time hoping that when I pull it out the smell of our home on fire will be gone, each time I am wrong . I still haven’t fully taken in the severity of fact that I have absolutely lost all of the furniture and decor and cute things I thought were my accomplishments, our safe place is gone ,the home that I made sure to re-organize and rearrange so that each time my babies stepped inside and only mommy was there, not Mommy & Mike hoping it would still feel like home to them. That place that I remade after I had already made it once hoping that the pain of this yet again broken family was also gone. That place is gone. Everything is being handled and cleared out and cleaned by the insurance and landlord, yes.
But the physical house wasn’t what we loved, the smell, the comfy blankets, the pictures of my babies everywhere, the toys flung wherever because it’s home, The constant complaints about kittens hair all over everything, the things that we had acquired together as our tiny unit of three, that’s what made it home.that’s what we loved . All of these things are replaceable, this I know. I am beyond grateful and forever will be that this did not happen while my children and I were at home sleeping. I can replace everything eventually except for them. I’m honestly pretty good at starting over. The pain that I’m feeling now is the anticipation of reality setting in to my two beautiful baby boys that their bedroom and their favorite comfy spot on the couch and all of the smells and feelings associated with our home, our little safe place are gone. I don’t like asking for anything I never have and I never will. But I need help, I was so proud of myself for keeping everything afloat and handling the bills as a single mom all alone .
but this, I need to find some place to stay for at least a month and that is going to take everything I have and even when we can return back to our home? Nothing will be there except clean floors and empty walls. Every single recording device all of my supplies for my work, my self-employment, the only way I can provide for my children was physically taken by the fire. Thousands of dollars that I had saved and invested into my self-employment because I knew I could do it and I knew I could make it work. The fire took that, everything else? The heat, the soot, the smoke and the water took. As of now I have no way to provide for my children , I can’t work without everything I lost in the fire. I will get there eventually but I desperately need help. I know $5,000 won’t even start to replace everything, I just don’t know what to ask for or what to say . Except please , if you can , please help me make my children’s lives as comfortable as possible while we piece our selves back together.
Mason: Boys Large (14)
Jameson: Boys Small (5/6)
P.O. Box
5447 Haines Rd N #287
Saint Petersburg, FL 33714
United States