Girl of the Burning West

100 Days

100 days of disbelief. Did it really all burn?

100 days of soot and smudge and char.

100 days of feeling as though you’d been ripped out of your patch of ground like a fucking turnip.

100 days of compartmentalizing/sobbing/compartmentalizing.

100 days of remembering yet another thing that you loved, that you took for granted, that you just bought, that is gone forever.

100 days of kindness from friends and strangers, reaching out , giving you throw blankets and sweatpants, Door Dashes and Venmos.

100 days of not being able to tell if you are utterly benighted, or the luckiest girl in the world.

100 days of salesclerks saying, “I’m so sorry. I can’t imagine…” then giving you 15% off your purchase and hand sanitizer.

100 mornings of worse and worse national news.

100 Facebook groups, Reddit threads, Threads threads all filled with your former neighbors telling stories exactly like yours, helping each other, sharing resources, making each other laugh.

100 days of how long can we stay here? Where will we go next? Is your go-bag packed? Should we just leave LA? Should we leave the country? Will we be safe here? Should we rebuild?

100 days of contractors in branded baseball caps circling your decimated neighborhood in big, shiny trucks, looking at you standing in front of your smouldering real estate like the roadkill you are. They slow down and hand you a glossy pamphlet and you take it because you are too enraged to know what else to do in the moment.

100 days of hold music.

100 changes of address.

100 trips to Ikea.

100 days of keeping your burn address as “home” in your Waze app because you just don’t have the heart to update it.

100 days of buying things you’ve already bought: Dustpans, Band-Aids, laundry baskets, hangers, bluetooth speakers, flip-flops, chairs, tequila. It’s back-to-school shopping for the School of Hard Knocks.

100 law offices spamming your inbox.

100 days of watching your guy, the only capable adult in the relationship, deal with insurance — firing off angry letters, trying to get your State Farm “Claims Specialist” to answer simple questions, waiting to hear from her supervisor, firing off complaints to the California Department of Insurance. and then saying,“Don’t fuck with a man whose house has burned down.” You laugh every time because you owe him that at least.

100 nights of dreams filled with flames.

100 days of waking up to watch your country burn. As if you didn’t already have enough to reckon with.

100 days of trying not to forget the lesson the fire has taught you —that anything without a conscience is lethal. It doesn’t care how rich, or poor, or sick, or kind or loved you are - the orange monster wants it all. It will devour everything you love or need unless you find some way to extinguish it.