Fire Season: Having a Crisis

The past two days my area has been on firewatch...we have all the conditions of an imminent fire occurrence and in some areas power is shut off.

I am fully prepared for evacuation but my mental health is trying to keep up. Yesterday all the work talk was on the major wildfire that happened two years ago to the day. Everyone is freaked out. Stepping outside is surreal, very much like the wildfires that have happened.

I suffered a loss of my home in the wildfire of 2017 and suffered another loss of my home last September.

I'm prepared this time, and so is the area, but I'm freaking out. I'm also afraid of a mental breakdown.

This sounds really silly, but lately I'm having a hard time reading. I spent fifteen minutes wrapping my brain around the word "empty". In my mind it doesn't sound like a real word even though I know it is. Or like the past few days I have to really sit and pronounce a basic word like I've never heard it before.

I'm just really spooked with the firewatch. I'm being pushed to my limit.

I can really use a kind word and a hug.

I feel like what is happening to you in this situation would also happen to me if I had lived through what you lived through and I am so very, very sorry that you lost your home to fire in 2017! What a heartbreaking situation then and now.

We don't get to pick the brain we want when we are born and a lifetime of experiences kind of programs it's autopilot. Pardon me if I am incoherent!

I am facing the prospect of a disease that nearly did me in the last time I had it so I am especially sensitive to people who are facing nightmarish scenarios in their lives right now.

I could be wrong but I think we kind of have to try to keep loving our little brain even when it is doing strange things or implanting unwelcome thoughts and feelings and sensations inside us.

Having suffered a nervous breakdown before I am not quite as scared of it happening again. But I realize the prospect of one is distressing to the extreme!

I remember sitting in an office inside a psychiatric hospital having rolling panic attacks and I asked the psychiatrist there what I should do. He kind of shocked me when he said: "I think you should have a nervous breakdown." It was like he was not only accepting me and my worth as a person but telling me that it was okay to not be okay when everything around me was falling apart.

Believe me, I am not trying to encourage you to break down, but I think the brain has its limits. None of us really know what those are until they happen to us. In a moment of candor, the psychiatrist told me: "I shouldn't be telling you this, but I have had a nervous breakdown before. "Stuff" happens."

Since I am facing the real possibility of this terminal illness now, my mind is all over the place. It feels sometimes like a hot fog around me or a cold one.

Today I was surfing the internet and my attention focused on the word "the." I kept looking at it and thinking how foreign it looked. I pronounced it and it sounded so barbaric to my ears. To be truthful I feel quite alienated from reality at the moment so my heart goes out to you.

Wish I knew how to be truly understanding and compassionate, but I am not all that wise.

I am sending you a virtual hug. I hope things turn out for the best for you or that no matter what happens, the ultimate outcome is the best one possible, all things considered.

Sorry I could not be helpful to you. Hopefully others here will have better words for you than my poor words!

Sending you best wishes! Yao Wen

The fire warning has been lifted in my area, and this morning I was greeted with my familiar cool coastal air. It's such a relief. For the next few days I'll keep my belongings packed just in case.

Hi Lark, I thought you were in Oregon? Are you back in this region? I'm asking because while I certainly didn't go through the extent of loss that you did, I definitely felt the effects of that particular fire. Being under fire watch and the month after month after month of heavily smoky air/ash. To this day I occasionally find ash dust in cracks inside my car.

So I don't know where you are, but after about 5 weeks over 100-plus (up to 118!) we're finally, finally down to around 90 and do have some fresh air that has come this way from the coast. Still, there is a haze from the Mosquito fire.

I am in Oregon. On the coast. We had a fire watch because of one the conditions and two because there were active fires fairly close to us. Two years ago we had a major fire in a neighborhood town north of us and it affected the whole coast. Still today people are rebuilding and that town and parts of my town lost their power this weekend to offset any possible fires. Every firetruck in the state was lined up for miles waiting for a big to do. We are very grateful with how things were handled in a proactive manner and we are so happy that today we had cold and fog and an appearance of rain.

Fire isn't something I do well with but I do my best to cope.

The wildfires have become sickening in their destruction.

Quote:

Fire isn't something I do well with but I do my best to cope.

Lark, it sounds like you did a fine job of coping. Good news that the fire watch was lifted.

I am terrified of fire

It's almost a phobia, tbh

I understand your well based fear of fire after what you have personally experienced. I lived for 54 years in So. Calif & the San Fernando Valley I grew up in, it was normal to have ALL the surrounding mountains on fire. Never got down out of the mountains though. One house we owned I came home early to water down my wood roof because the fire was on the hill right in back of our home & watched the fire helicopters fly right over.

Last home was far from any fire danger but the smoke landed my in the hospital for 10 days & everything tasted & smelled like smoke for months. Think it was still inside my sinuses.

I have 2 huge burn piles in my front field from all the clearing I had done behind my house & up to my woods. I told the guys they were going to have to come back & burn the brush because I DON'T DO FIRES.

When I first moved here a neighbor did a burn pile near my woods. I called the FD 2 times to check on it. I get the fear you experience. You handled it very well this time. Good job keeping it in your logical mind

"I see your hair is burning
Hills are filled with fire
If they say I never loved you
You know they are a liar"

-The Doors, L.A. Woman


I always think of this song when SoCal is on fire every summer.

Sending big hugs and genuine sympathy to all my friends who are confronted with this terrible potentiality.

I have to agree with willowtigger on this one: Fire of any kind is a huge scary monster to my mind. I don't have reasons to be worried like anyone living on the West Coast...it's just an powerful fear of mine, bordering on a phobia.

Anybody who lives through these Summers and (now Fall and Winter) gets through it compos mentis is a hero in my book. I have trouble watching the news and knowing how many of you are dealing with this. It gives me real anxiety, and sometimes moves me to tears.

LL, I always think of you, and now *Beth*, and anyone else in that range. We have wonderful friends in B.C. who are also facing these uncomfortable and worrisome conditions.

I sigh big sighs of relief when the fire season is officially over! I have for years now, even before I ever got to know you all.

Unlimited hugs and real sympathy for you!

Fire is something to take seriously, I hope everyone here is safe from a fire