On November 8th, 2024, we were woken in the wee hours of the morning by the smoke alarm. Smoke hung heavy in the living room, and we frantically evacuated our burning house. I had two foster kittens down my shirt – having spent the last fortnight saving their lives – and I only grabbed my phone because you need that to ring 000.
I left the front door open in the hope our cats would find their way out, and we bolted, herding kids in front of us.
The thing about watching your whole life burn down around your ears, quite literally, is that it’s really hard to tell your anxious children that nothing bad is going to happen. Because yes, we could have all died. All that stood between us and death was a few minutes and a smoke alarm.
Fire is fast. It is so fast. And it’s even faster when your house is old and made of volatile timbers. Which is something we only found out when it burned like a matchstick.
It’s been three months. Which is both an impossibly long and an impossibly short amount of time. In between here and there we’ve been in a motel, an air bnb, we got robbed, had our car stolen, moved home, lived in tents, lived in our half burned studio shed, and now, we’re living in a bus.
It’s easier to forget how incredibly shit everything is when the weather is fine, but today is raining and cold and we’re all on top of each other, there’s no comfortable seating on the bus, and we’re still having to run a generator for electricity.
Let’s NOT talk about the cost of fuel right now. (Or groceries, or literally anything else.)
It’s fucked.
…
A few years back I decided to change how I engaged in social media. For my own mental health, I worked on actively sharing good things, fun things, kitten things. I joked that fostering kittens was mental health support, and sharing them online was part of that.
But it’s really hard and exhausting to be the constantly upbeat person. And today, in the rain, and the cold, it’s hard.
People say really strange shit in the wake of a fire. Things like “at least you’ll get a nice new house!” and “I mean, maybe this happened for a reason?” Like the end goal is New Things and A New Life.
And I know they’re probably also looking for the upside here, and not meaning to be impossibly shit, but it drives home how much people don’t think through what they say. I don’t actually want a new house, or a new life, or to rebuild everything from scratch.
My upside here is that my kids aren’t babies, so they come home and tell us the stupid things people have said to them and we can laugh and laugh, and agree that this sucks balls. (Someone suggested the other day that maybe it was actually the neighbours house that burned, not ours? Maybe we were confused? And I’m not sure what their thought process was, but we are still joking about that)
…
Of course I’m grateful we didn’t all die and I’m grateful I didn’t have to bury a child. But it kind of goes without saying. I don’t think I should have to brighten up all my complaints and struggles with “but at least no humans died!”
Our cat, Spark died, of course, overtaken by smoke, hiding under the couch. I heard him screaming at the end, and couldn’t do anything about it. We found his body curled up, so I know the smoke got him first, at least. At least at least at least.
Then we had to put our dog down, because she was old and confused, and her brain fell apart when she couldn’t navigate her life by smell and memory anymore.
And our cat Estelle is missing again – having come home initially, and then vanished, not loving the status quo.
I got a call from one of my kids psychologists the other day, and god, she is lovely, but you cannot talk about normal teenage coping strategies and how to keep teenage brains safe and stable in the wake of watching your house burn down, because all our coping strategies burned alongside it, and we’re all just sort of clinging to each other and black humour. I know she was just trying to help, but what works for standard depression is possibly akin to throwing teacups of water on a bushfire.
Again. It’s exhausting. Because unless you’ve been through this yourself, you cannot understand. And I hate that we’re part of this club, but mostly I hate that this shitty club exists.
Anyway. It’s cold and shitty today. I’m still waiting for insurance to settle everything, and apparently a good crisis is great for making me want to blog again.
Silver linings maybe.
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