Some people have pointed out the hardship of accumulating collective traumas in #Houston due to weather related events. It started for me in 2015, when I had to sleep in my car when the city flooded in a couple of hours around me. 1/
As I type it I feel stupid about it. I was able to be an immigrant in a city that has also been incredibly generous. I had a car which is definitely a privilege. I was in grad school in the United States while others have nothing. 2/
But the problem is that being grateful doesn't erase how things feel to you, how fucking scared I was that night. It doesn't erase the fact that back in Sonora there were days we didn't have water for days too. 3/
That people died on the street of heatstroke waiting for the bus in the middle of summer. The level of privilege you live in only gets you so far as compared with others. Then we lost everything during #Harvey and that feeling doesn't go away. 4/
The accumulating trauma is not a series of isolated events. It's precisely a return of the past in the present, a recurrence of a nameless force that is greater than language sometimes. They were calling Houston a "third world country" in the last few days. 5/
I'm a third world country. I'm what they're referring to: scarce, precarious, poor, irrelevant. These things don't happen here. I don't happen here. But here we are in #DisasterCity all over again. I didn't lose everything this time and I am grateful. 6/
But how can one be grateful enough to not feel like the past repeats itself again. It feels like we lost everything, again, but we didn't. It feels like a never ending battle to belong somewhere. The endless battle of being apart.
Adding to what @mattlanza was saying yesterday.
There is a wonderful project lead by @lacymjohnson that gathers stories, testimony and art regarding flooding in our area. You can check it out here: @FloodMuseum houstonfloodmuseum.org
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