Best We Did It! We Totally Survived, pt. 3: And Then I Got My Light Back

Never was Sandy truly evil to me.  I did not have electricity, heat, phone or internet in my neighborhood for four nights and four days, but that was only a severe and aggravating inconvenience—certainly of the sort I'd hate to put up with again—but softball, Brownie Scouts level stuff compared to what so many other New Yorkers and New Jersians were dealing with.

Still, all week I resented how happy I was going to be when the power came back.  I hated how happy something I should have had was going to make me.  I was lucky to be able to go into work on Thursday and Friday, if I hadn't I probably would have gone out of my skull, and Friday afternoon when ConEd started tweeting and then robo-calling that power was back east of Broadway and north of Canal I sighed such a sigh and chuckled such a chuckle, what a relief what a relief it was to know I could switch my light on when I got home.

And on my way home there were lights all the way, like an office and apartment runway showing me the way home.  People on the street, we shared smirks of guilty pleasure and my skin hummed with anticipation.  A few blocks from my apartment I got a call from Andy, five days trapped (but well-stocked with necessities) on the 18th floor of his apartment building, he hooted and cackled with joy over the electricity's return.

And when I got home and saw this, it was just so, so sweet.

I must remember that people still struggle, that many Sandy stories were not as happy and simple as mine.  A coworker had her car swept away by the waters, another is stranded at his Long Island home without power and with little food, water, fuel or heat and a whole family to worry about, I know three families that live in the tiny strip of Manhattan that won't be getting power back until the end of this week.  I was just sore because I had to hold a candle party every night and turn in before 9:30 for lack of anything to do, I was just tired of living Abraham Lincoln-style.