Dear Everyone,
It has been a week since January 8th, and as the adrenaline wanes and the panic recedes, the enormity of that night begins to settle.
How does one, in mere minutes, reconcile the possibility of never returning home? Of watching a lifetime’s labor, love, and memories threatened with obliteration? How do you confront the fragility of permanence? Everything you have built, cherished, and invested your soul into, perched on the precipice of ruin. I wandered the house, frantically gathering the irreplaceable, those sacred fragments of my journey, all while flames roared just beyond the window, a fiery reminder of what I was about to lose. Running around the house glancing at each item after the next, muttering over and over, "They’re just things, they’re just things," a mantra meant to sever attachment, to prepare for the inevitable.
But they aren’t just things and it does all matter.
Every trinket holds a piece of my essence, a testament to a moment in time. In those panicked moments, I felt the crushing weight of choosing what to save and what to surrender. Simultaneously negotiating and surrendering; it felt like psychological warfare and it was almost debilitating. Each choice was a silent farewell, a negotiation with impermanence, and the realization that these objects, while seemingly trivial, encapsulate my existence. They are not mere possessions; they are the tangible trinkets of proof of my effort, sacrifice, and resilience. They hold the echoes of laughter, the traces of tears, and the indelible marks of those I have loved and lost. To see them reduced to ashes would feel like erasing not just a home but the story of a life.
Driving away that night, I was convinced I would never return. The fire, relentless and indiscriminate, consumed the hillside with a ferocity that seemed unstoppable. I prepared myself for finality, for the knowledge that all I had known would soon exist only in memory. But that was not my fate.
The heaviness and heartache of losing everything is one that I am so very fortunate to not have to see through to the bitter end. Through the heroic efforts of the Los Angeles Fire Department, my home still stands, bearing only the faintest traces of smoke’s ghostly embrace.
While I am unimaginably grateful for this mercy, my heart aches for those who cannot say the same. Across the city, countless lives have been irrevocably altered, their landscapes, both physical and emotional, scorched beyond recognition. Among them are people I know and love, their loss unfathomable and their pain immeasurable. I am left with a sense of gratitude entwined with sorrow, a profound awareness of my fortune against the backdrop of so much devastation.
The fear, the panic, the helplessness and the preemptive negotiation with myself over what I’m about to lose are not emotions I wish to revisit. They exposed the tenuous thread that binds us to the physical world and the delicate balance between what we hold dear and what we can let go of.
To those who have lost everything, words feel achingly inadequate. What can be said to ease the agony of such a profound void? Loss on this scale transcends the material; it strikes at the heart of identity and belonging. Yet, I extend my deepest sorrow and solidarity to all who have faced this cruel and capricious fate. I am so very sorry. I am sorry for your pain, for your loss and for the staggering weight of starting anew.
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