Editor’s Note: Candela Perez-Castellanos is a former Panther now enrolled at Warren Wilson College and playing on the basketball team there. When Hurricane Helene decimated parts of North Carolina, Warren Wilson and the town of Swannanoa were devastated. Displaced by the storm, Perez-Castellanos was offered refuge on campus here. As a means of coping and therapy, she has detailed some of her experience. There are her words–raw and unedited as she wrote them.

Sept. 29–Swannanoa

It was 8 p.m., and I was in my room listening to music while eating one of the few bags of snacks I had left.

At this point I didn’t mind wasting battery because every musical note that entered my brain was helping me mentally.

No electricity, barely any coverage, no water, and my friends playing Monopoly in the living room. Others in my group were outside at Sage Circle smoking. Everything was calming down again: We had been stressed, and I had been considering getting out of here, but I stayed.

The emotional roller coaster was on a steep slope again when my roommate came into our dorm yelling that we had to leave.

Not understanding what she was saying to me, and while hearing screams, I put the clothes reserved for emergencies in my backpack and put on my sweatshirt. I didn’t know what was happening until later when I was rushing out that I understood that the dam was about to break.

We ran off to find Lydia, but apparently she had already left. I grabbed Nass’s hand, and we started walking toward the soccer fields, given the high level of the field compared to the campus.

The tension between all of us walking there and my hand squeezing his trying to calm him down. I kept eating my snacks until we reached the fields, and I remember the tense and terrifying silence of the walk there.

“I’m scared” he told me.

I don’t know how, but I kept calm.

Once in the fields, while the wet grass ran through my nervous system, I saw Lydia, and we headed toward the highest part, then into the forest. Now it was Lydia and me. I could feel the fear of the people, the terror in my friend’s eyes, and the uncertainty.

At that time, I had a backpack on me that weighed a ton, some crocs without socks, and I remember how I didn’t care about getting between dangerous plants and stepping on wet and slippery ground.

Students were shouting, trying to announce things. Mario was standing nearby. And a girl gave Lydia a jacket. She had nothing, I at least had my backpack with supplies, my passport and essentials. However, my phone was running out of battery.

We were told to go back down to the fields to hear what they were saying. There was a line of people helping us down so we wouldn’t fall, and once down, I saw more of my friends. Two of them were stung by bumblebees. The anxiety I felt was indescribable.

People were smiling as we waited for news. Up ahead, Lydia and I sat on my backpack, and I put on some socks.

Texts, calls, low battery.

My team members were worried about me. Ellie called me asking about her mother (the coach) who I later found out had fled with the kids in the car. They told us to stay alert. Suddenly someone broke the news that it (the dam) was all a false alarm. We stayed there for a while anyway because we didn’t know if the dam would break at any moment.

Later, when we were about to leave, I saw people coming back and asked them why. Apparently, the president was coming to announce something. We stayed until another man told us that we were safe, that someone had given false news, and it had been officially released.

In between moments of sitting and waiting, I felt like crying, but I pulled myself together. I remember how Lydia and I used certain teachings from our “Music as Therapy” class, and we started breathing back to back in unison, and I remember how I started singing a song they taught us “I see you with my eyes, I see you with my heart” and it calmed us down a lot.

When I checked the song I was listening to at the time my roomie burst into my room, I realized it was “Born to Die” by Lana del Rey. We came back after taking our time, sitting there.

Another boy joined us and thanked me for waiting for him and checking that he was following us. We arrived at my building, and people were happy to see us. They told me that they had asked for me, and that made me happy and satisfied. Now I was receiving messages that I had to leave, from people offering me a ride, but after talking to my beloved parents at 5 in the morning in Spain, I decided to stay.

Nerves on edge, wanting to cry, uncertainty and fear.

Some started drinking, others left the campus.

Mario told me that a colleague from my team called him and my roommate (as well as me at least three times) and asked if I could go to her building to put my shoes on the bed. She had already written and called me asking if I was okay and asking me for a favor.

When she said that I should go to her building I told her I couldn’t. I was stressed and couldn’t be on the lookout to put some shoes on the bed in case they got wet.

I’m safe now, but it’s incredible how we believe and trust blindly. We trust the people who said the dam was breaking, and we trust those who said it wasn’t.

I want calm and tranquility.

Right now I’m just looking ahead, looking forward to going to breakfast and for the president to announce the news at 9:30 a.m. We are so vulnerable… and water gives life, yes, but it can also take it away. We depend on nature, but it’s very strong how it can kill. And how fear is contagious.

We are united, my international friends and some others. I’m so grateful for this community that I feel like I’ll be part of this land forever.

Oct. 4, Swannanoa

Today Jess picked me up from WWC to take me to Charlotte. Now I’m waiting in her car outside her house, processing everything I’ve seen on the way here. We’ll be leaving for Charlotte soon, and I’ll see Melanie (Rooks, coordinator of international student programming) there.

But right now, it feels like being in a tiny, dark box, and you just want to breathe with anguish in your lungs. There are no words to describe what it feels like right now.

When people tell you what they’ve seen, and when you think about how many people are still fighting for their lives, it makes you want to cry. You just stare at the destroyed house or the tree that a caravan has uprooted and you don’t do anything else.

Silence, thoughts.

The sound of helicopters will never mean the same again. It’s so hard to hear them fly by every few minutes, hear sirens and remember everything.

Jess told me that her daughter Chloe saw people asking for help in a part of the river that she couldn’t access. They were begging for help and she just watched them go down the stream. She saw people clinging to trees fighting for their lives and angry at her for not helping them while she did everything she could.

I can’t even imagine what she’s going through.

The therapy needed is going to be tremendous.

My friend Kelly told me stories from people close to her where they had seen people’s bodies piled up in the firehouse building.

We may not go back to our college for months. The fact that we are being forced to leave what we call home because it is temporarily closing is distressing. I won’t see my friends for an unknowable amount of time. I won’t play with my teammates for a long time. When everything was going idyllic, the hurricane took it away.

I can’t complain too much because there are people still fighting for their lives, or people who are gone. But I can’t believe that everything I had fought for has vanished. And here I am, with a coffee on my lap, in Jess’s favorite mug, writing in awe of what I’m seeing around me.

Now I’m going to go to a place where everything is normal, and where I’m probably feeling empty because no one who hasn’t lived through this can understand what my mind is processing that I don’t even know yet. I keep telling myself everything is okay, but my tears are screaming to come out, and I’m not letting them.

Riley, Jess’s dog, is behind me now, and a coffee has never felt so cozy. It’s amazing to think that two days ago I was at peace inside the WWC bubble while my surroundings are shattered.

I got to Charlotte, and when I hugged Jess and the tears fell, we hugged for a long time, and she told me she was there. I kept saying thank you and that I’m here for her too.

Melanie was super happy to see me, but my eyes were half-closed, wanting to disappear for a while. We hugged, and I wanted to go into the restaurant bathroom where she and her friends were already, but she told me I should say hello first.

No one knew what was going on. Jess and I looked like homeless people.

The feeling of seeing people living their normal lives, using a bathroom after a week of not being able to use a normal one, being able to buy anything at the gas station while remembering how they rationed our food… I won’t deny it, it has traumatized me.

My tears couldn’t hold back any longer, and I cried in the bathroom. Melanie hugged me for a long time while my body kept expressing what it had been holding in for days.

When I went back outside with Melanie’s friends, the mother of one of them screamed after hearing me say “there are a lot of dead people” and how she said “are you traumatized?… yes, you seem that way.”

I had to go and cry somewhere alone.

Feeling of guilt because there are people worse off than me.

Uncertainty because I may not return to my campus for months.

Helplessness.

Tears that express everything my body had hidden to be strong and help others, or simply because I am like that.

Melanie has told me that she felt that I was not letting myself feel everything that was happening, and that is why she wanted me to get out of that environment for a week.

I think those tears held the pain of so many people that I have empathy for, and so many hidden feelings…

Now I am heading to Ferrum, another place where no one understands what we have been through. But Jess has been very good to me, and I am grateful for her help, to Melanie, and EVERYTHING.

I am lucky.