December 1st, 2010
Almost Three Months After the Fire
In a recent meeting organized for Four Mile Fire survivors, the speaker asked how many of us were having trouble sleeping or were taking something to help us sleep. Nearly every hand went up.
Tonight I can’t sleep. It is the middle of the night and even Nellie is fed up with my insomnia. She had been thrashing around on the bed for hours, restless, waiting for me to turn the light off. She finally got up and glared at me, as if to say “COME ON! Are we ever going to sleep?!” and then jumped off the bed and went into the living room and plopped down on the carpet to sleep. Sigh.
I have pills to take that will help me sleep, but they give me nightmares. Terrible nightmares, not just your garden variety types of Bad Dreams. This morning I dreamed that I was in the Free Store, trying to reach some towels on top of a high shelf, and when I reached for them, all the linens and towels and heavy rugs came tumbling down on top of me. I tried to push them away as they fell, but they just kept coming and coming, like a swarm of locusts, until I was almost buried. I woke up sweating, and pulled Nellie closer to me and wrapped my arms around her. She sighed and snuggled in, and I calmed down. There was no way I was going back to sleep, but I decided to just surrender to my insomnia, and to not freak out about it so much. “Don’t worry about sleep,” I told myself, “Just rest.”
When I tell my friends about my insomnia, they tell me I need therapy, to which I reply, “Really, YOU THINK I NEED THERAPY!!?” and then we laugh. They are both pleased and a bit concerned that I am STILL SO ANGRY. I tell them that I have a LOT to be ANGRY ABOUT. And of course, being my friends, they agree. And they still think I need therapy. Sigh. I know. I’m sure I do; anyone who’s been through this would, but who has time? I realize as I write that the dream I had this morning was probably how I feel about my To Do list after the fire – things just keep piling up and piling up, and falling down on me until I feel like I’m being buried.
The other day a friend said, kindly, “I can’t imagine what your life is like right now,” and I said, “Do you really want to know? I get up each day and jump on The Terrible Treadmill of the To-Do List, and I run and run as fast as I can, and at the end of the day I am no closer to the end than when I started. And then the next day I get up, and the treadmill is LONGER. But I get back on, because what else can I do? I hate the treadmill, and I want to just get off and go home. But I can’t.” She didn’t say a word, but wrapped her arms around me. And then I burst into tears. It felt good.
I think part of why I hesitate to go to therapy is that I don’t want to lose my anger, my edge. It keeps me going most days. I’m afraid a therapist will ask, “Exactly WHO are you angry with? WHAT are you angry at?” And what would I say? I’m angry at Nature, for creating Fire? I’m angry at the stupid fifty-mile-an-hour winds, that blew so hard the slurry bombers couldn’t even take off until six hours after the fire started? Am I angry at the guy who started the fire? What, like he could buy me a new house? Am I angry at the insurance folks, who are making me write an inventory of every single thing I owned, down to the socks and underwear, and list where I bought it, when I bought it, the brand name, what it cost back then, and what it would cost to replace today? For EVERY SINGLE THING?
They didn’t invent this system – they’re just doing their jobs, and some of them are working seven days a week on our claims. One of my adjusters lives in Wyoming – he hasn’t even gotten to go home in months. He was in New Orleans, away from his home and family, for A YEAR after Hurricane Katrina – can you imagine? Walking among destruction and tragedy, day after day after day, with crazed, grieving, beaten up folks like me? So no, I’m not mad at those guys. SO WHO AM I MAD AT???
I don’t know, frankly, but this whole thing has sure got my Irish up, and I think that’s keeping me going. That, and my friends.
About two weeks after the house burned down, my friends and I loaded up shovels and rakes and went up to see it for the first time, and to see if we could recover anything from the ashes. I was walking around the burned-up foundation with my insurance adjuster, trying to describe what the house used to look like – the size of the garage, the slant of the roof, where the barn used to be, how big the dog pen was, and a million other details. While we walked around, the brave friends who had come up with me on that hot day were down on their hands and knees in the rubble, with sifters and rubber gloves, digging through ash and metal and shattered dishes and melted glass in the ninety-degree heat. It was horrible, miserable, filthy work, and they were down there laughing and crying and digging away in the rubble – for me. Because they loved and wanted to help – me.
At one point I turned around and was so touched by the sight of them, down there digging, that I started to cry, right in front of the adjuster. I put my hand on his shoulder and said, “Look. Look at my friends, look at what they’re doing. Aren’t they amazing?” And he turned to me and said, “I’ve only just met you, but I know that if it was you – if it was their house and it was you,” (and here he choked up a bit,) “you would be down there, digging through the ashes for them.” And I looked at him and said, “You’re right.” And then we both stood there, side by side, crying, and looking out at the charred meadow, and the burned trees all around, and the twisted pile of metal and ash that used to be my house.
And now, tonight, in the middle of the night, I think to myself that maybe when this whole thing starts moving a little bit I will not be so angry. Maybe when the debris is finally cleared, and the insurance is settled, and I find a builder, I will be able to breathe again. Maybe when I’m not on the phone all day, calling lawyers, or the phone company, or the bank, or the County, or the adjusters, all the while working full time – maybe then I will be able to calm down a bit. Maybe when the outline of my new home begins to take shape, when I can actually start to visualize my new life in the mountains and not as a vagabond down in town… Maybe then I will sleep. But right now, the To-Do List looms over me, day and night, threatening to fall on me like a mountain of castaway blankets, and smother me with its musty weight.
I look at Nellie sleeping in the living room and think, I must get more help with all this. I have to reach out some more. I have to ask for help – I’m so tired of asking, but I have to do it. Just like surrendering to my insomnia, I have to surrender to needing people right now. I have to be at peace with it, to rest in the arms of my friends, who will rally once again and say, as my friend Bhanu did, “Give me homework, I’ll do it. Whatever you want – I’m yours.”
“Whatever you want, I’m yours.” It’s true, isn’t it? Some of our friends can’t be bothered; they can’t deal with the grief, or the craziness of our lives. They say “I’m so sorry,” and go on their way. And some people want to help, but it comes with a price tag. But our Real Friends, the people who really love us – they are merely waiting for the call, their hearts at the ready. They will show up at the door with food or flowers or a shoulder to cry on, day after day, month after month. And some of them will just pick up a shovel, and start to dig. These are the friends worth keeping. They are ours, and we are theirs.
I hear a soft clicking across the wood floor, and see that Nellie has come back into the bedroom to give it another try. She stands at the side of the bed and wags, asking for a lift up. I smile, and pick her up and plop her down on one of the pillows. She stares at me for a moment, then sighs a deep, contented sigh, and closes her eyes.
I think I can sleep now. And tomorrow, I will get up, and get back on that treadmill. And maybe, with the help of friends, I will get a little closer to that time, that day, when I can sit on the porch of my new house, and look out over the greening meadow, and say, “Wow, it’s over. It’s really, really, over. And I made it.” For I will make it – One day at a time, one hour at a time, one breath at a time. With your help, I will finally, one day, make it Home.
Wishing You a Good Night, and Sweet Dreams,
Andi and Nellie
Oh, no! A woman, angry? Fix her–now!
I say, use the anger. That’s what it’s there for. Use it like the soil uses carrot peels and sh*t, like the insects use blackened, burned trees–to start something new. If it’s a choice between anger and depression, choose anger. It can keep you moving forward. It’s a normal reaction to loss, part of the divine composting of this strange, breaking-down-and-rebuilding world.
Any therapist worth the fee won’t focus on the anger of a woman who just lost everything. I only wish we weren’t so isolated that the best place to get steady, count-on-it-every-week support is by paying for it, in therapy.
I have friends like that, too. I wish all the movies and songs were about how friendship keeps is alive and growing, instead of bleating about romance. No wonder we’re all addicted to the unrequited in this culture.
Sweet dreams to you too! Seems to me the anger is good–especially since it sounds like you have a good ratio of laughter and tears mixed with it.
I think about the anger you’ve described, and it seems different from typical anger. There’s no direct focus of the anger. It’s not like the guy who T-boned your car, or the kid who threw snowballs at your head. It’s hard to point to a specific adversary and say, “You. I’m angry at you.” It’s diffuse, questioning (“should I be angry at Nature for creating fire?”), and not really directed at a specific person or thing.
It seems akin to the anger that a person newly-diagnosed with a disease feels. Angry at the disease, angry at her body that let her down, but really, with whom or what to be angry? Angry at the universe? Her gene pool? Her rotten luck?
It’s the anger of powerlessness. The anger at not being able to be in control, at not having been able to prevent the fire, the disease. The anger at not being able to control the path you’re on right now. The anger at how long it takes, how much effort is required, just to get through each day. Everything seems so much harder than it needs to be. You just want to go home. You want to wake up and find everything as it was. Push the reset button. Start the game over.
So the anger gets channeled into determination. “I’m not going to be defeated by you,” be it bureaucratic paperwork, or a pile of wet laundry. It’s not the anger that’s tiring you out, it’s the pile of tasks before you.
Then there are the tears. Mourning tears. Frustration tears. Tears of love and joy in the midst of chaos and loss. Even the tears are tiring.
I’d be worried if you WEREN’T angry, if there were no tears.
The rawness, the edge, the hyper-awareness of breathing, the instant clarity. All come with the territory. It’s the physiology, the adrenal overload, the corticosteroid soup in your veins triggering the primal survival mechanisms.
Therapy isn’t going to take away the anger or the tears.
It’s all good.
You’ll make it.
Wishing you and Nellie many good nights of sleep.
Yep. No therapist work her weight is going to want you to let go of your anger before you are ready to let go of your anger. It’s all yours. You’ve earned it. Keep it as long as you need to. Healing comes in ripples and waves. You can take all the time you need to heal. It’s not really about what you want so much as about what you need.
I wish I lived closer. I would like to be there to support you in some little and meaningful way. Hope you and Nellie are sleeping more peacefully tonight.
This is a fiercely magnificent post, proof of your authenticity and honesty. And each of the commenters meets you with wisdom and love. From my own experience with horror and loss, facing what-is, what’s really happening now, takes the suffering out of anger. Love, love, love.
Hi Andi. It’s almost midnight, and I hope you are resting tonight. Just popping in to let you know I’m praying for you and Nellie. All the best.
Feel what you need to feel …………..
fwiw, I am reminded of a poem, I hope I have not missed the mark:
The Guest House – by Jelaluddin Rumi
This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture.
Still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.
Hi Andi:
Love your blog.
And about this post, yes there WILL come a day when you are sitting on your new deck, looking at that greening meadow. You will hold that vision in your mind and then one day you will sit there and have this amazing feeling of deja vu and think, where have I seen this before? Oh! I imagined all of this, and here it is.
Maybe creating that vision at night can help you drift off to sleep…