In October of 2012, we were all struck in some way by superstorm Sandy, whether you lost power, got a little rain, or worse lost your house. We are now three years out from this horrible storm, and some of you may be perfectly fine, but some people are still without their home some people have just been able to lift their home THREE YEARS LATER! That is a crazy amount of time.

I live in an area that was largely affected by this horrendous storm, so much so that it is far from being normal. If anyone was able to watch the news during the storm there was a bridge, this bridge went into what looked like the ocean at the time, but it really is a bridge from the mainland to the barrier island. The houses on the other side of this bridge got hit the worst in my area, one even wiped off its foundation and slammed into the bridge.

Areas like mine have many years to go before they will be able to fully recover. Every day that I go over the bridge it makes me sad, sad to see the amount of houses that were lost. Sad to see that the town still isn’t letting them rebuild due to beaches not being rebuilt, and the steal wall (which was put in the ground after Sandy) being exposed due to the beaches being so small now.

Our lives will forever be changed by this storm, people may never be able to go back to their house, or maybe they lost someone during the storm. I know personally, that this storm has changed me for the better, between growing as a person, and learning how to come together with my community to help my neighbors, and for the worse of being afraid just to go in the ocean. It is things like this that we as a community tend not to think about anymore but we can stop showing support to the people around us.

It sounds corny but we are stronger than the storm.

I may not know what it is like to lose the only home I have ever known. But I was there, I was in an area that was never told to evacuate, but we flooded anyway. Though the water didn’t come into my house, it went into the neighboring houses. The water came so fast we couldn’t get many cars out of the neighborhood, in a half an hour it went from trickling down the sides of the street to being on the sidewalk. From there it came all the way to the sill of our front door, mind you, we were one of the higher houses on the street.

If you didn’t live through it you may not understand how bad it truly was. Just thinking about the comments I got from people telling me it wasn’t that bad was frustrating to hear. It was that bad, having to worry about what you are and aren’t going to save, moving things around, and praying the water stops rising. My family was one of the lucky ones. Don’t get me wrong we had damage, but it could have been worse.

This article isn’t to make anyone feel bad, or get pity, this article is to let everyone know that although this storm has been over for more than 3 years we still struggle for normalcy. Every day another house gets raised and that person’s life get turned upside down again. They have to be out of their homes for months on end while it get jacked into the air to be put even higher just in case another 1 in a million storm comes along again.

This storm was a rare time in the year that everything was working against us to create this superstorm that destroyed everything in its path.

Don’t let this storm overcome you! But, don’t forget the pain it caused.

I will forever be a different person because of superstorm Sandy!