St. Paul apartment fire: Resident describes losing everything

I keep expecting to wake up. Yesterday I kept saying that it felt like a nightmare that I just like couldn't wake up from and I kept like waiting to like wake up and it just kept getting worse. I mean it was bad from the beginning and my cat was trapped inside and I was at work and I got a message from a neighbor saying that the building was on fire and asking where Honey was. That's my cat. I raced home from work. I sprinted here. I left my car in the middle of the street and just ran and screamed until a firefighter brought him down and saved him. And everything else is just stuff, but he was the most important thing. And so once I got him, I think it was just shock at that point from then on. And this morning washing the smell of the smoke from my burning apartment out of my my hair. It was really devastating to remember that experience. It doesn't feel real because you would never think something like this would be real. It's kind of an insane feeling to watch your whole life crumble, literally. It's people keep asking like how I'm feeling and it's one of those things that I don't even know how to feel because it's something that you just never think would happen. It's devastating to lose everything. I mean everything. I moved in in July actually so I was really excited. I had actually just thrown a Halloween party with all my friends and I really loved being there. I loved the old charm of the building. It just felt like a space I could see myself. Living into like I was thinking of like paint colors and like how I was going to decorate it. I think that it didn't really sink in until I saw it start to come down like that. I mean, you see the flames and I lived on the second floor, so I knew that the third floor was in trouble. But I mean, I had kind of hope I had had been holding on to hope that maybe Maybe, um... something would be able to be salvaged from my home. But I think seeing the bricks falling off the building and watching just watching it come down is And knowing that your whole life is in there and there's nothing you can do, there's nothing you can change, nothing you can fix, there's no one you can ask for help, you're just, it's just gone. It's just all gone. And that is a debilitatingly difficult feeling to have, for sure. The Red Cross was here yesterday and they took down our information and asked us if we had places to stay and I'm fortunate and so lucky to have an incredible community of family and friends and co-workers and neighbors who are all you know pouring out support. There's a lot of folks in the Mack Groveland and Highland Park neighborhoods who are starting to collect donations for people. For me my next step is insurance. Just trying to find a new home. I've scheduled some tours for other apartments and hopefully getting a security deposit and November's rent back so that I can you know use that money to help start my life again and rebuild my life. I don't know, they don't give you a checklist of things to go through. It's like, hey, your house just burned to the ground, or is being torn to the ground. Here's a list of stuff you should probably be doing right now. I mean like I literally googled what to do after your house burns down in a fire last night so I think just call your insurance um and I mean make sure you're safe and out of the building but I mean it's not something that anyone has a guidebook for and it's it's a kind of loss that feels so silly to be so upset over because it's just just stuff but it's Like I collect tomato themed things and everything I own that's tomato related was in that apartment and all of my cat stuff and my couch and my bed and my clothes you know and it's things you have memories attached to and and it's your life it's your your whole life that you build and it's just gone and and there's nothing you can do about that and there's no way to fix that you know You know, there's nothing that can happen to change. what's already happened at this point so we just move forward that's all you can do. I mean like I see my home and it's gone it's it's all gone and I can't get any of it back ever it's all gone. I just want to go home you know I just really wish I could go home right now but that's not an option anymore which sucks.