Nothing super about this storm

This will be a short column.

For two days I went without power--a small price compared to what friends and neighbors experienced in Hoboken and Brooklyn, lower Mahattan and down by the water here in Milford, CT. But let me tell you, for about 18 hours straight I was terrified.

I don't own a home; I am not even renting an apartment. I am staying somewhere about 3 miles in from town temporarily as I apartment hunt. I rely on people here to inform me of the integrity of the building. Am I going to ask for a recent building inspector's report? Right.

So when the wind started kicking up Mon. morning as I left my room, I wrote out a "will". I use quotes because a) I didn't bet on not making it through Hurricane Sandy, but b) in case I was that one statistic from Milford, Conn. to not pull through, to get hit in the head by a collapsed roof or shards of metal that pierced the window, I wanted my brother to get my CD collection.

Now, I've been through worse personally. I've lost boyfriends, homes, jobs, my fertility -- all of it, to some degree, horrific. But there is perhaps no more terrifying ordeal than being completely alone when faced with the wrath of Mother Nature. The advice to "hunker down" when alone feels a little like crawling in a fox hole when mortar fire's engulfing the battlefield. It's like drinking the Kool-Aid but being told you probably didn't get the poisonous batch.

Will you be ok, you wonder, as your cat looks at you with fear in his green eyes and another thud stops you cold. The wind was only whipping at tropical storm force strength most of the time, but that alone was scary; add to that some 70 mph gusts (or even more) and you're glad you made your peace with God 10 minutes earlier.

So the point of bringing this up is not to feel sorry for oneself. Sandy's death toll as of today, Nov. 1, 2012 is 74 -- and they haven't nearly rescued all those trapped in places like Hoboken so the number could surely rise -- so I am very happy to be alive. No, the point is to remind everyone who reads this, who watches, listens to and reads the news but is not intimately affected by it, that my community has been wounded.

It's all the fresher because 11 years ago we went through something even more horrific, more unimaginable and not so super either. It was called 9-11.

So for now, please just leave our hurricane alone. Call it for what it is--a piece of crap. Not Super. Not Franken. Not. At. All.