How A Natural Disaster Taught Me What Matters Most

Are you okay? Do you want the truth or a well formulated omission of it?

MentalDessert
Aug 27, 2017 · 3 min read

I’ve lived through some tornados, blizzards, and other natural disasters in my lifetime. I feel like these moments of terror, having absolutely no control over anything, teaches us what matters most in life.

What Matters In Those Moments

There are questions that you need to ask yourself and answer within a moments notice. When the sirens are going off for a tornado near by it only gives you a set amount of time to either stay and hide, or get out and drive.

My mother was the get out and drive type. We never had a basement where we lived, and all the bedrooms had windows. So, we’d pile into a small car and hit the vacant roads. Which, looking back on it, was not the smartest idea.

What do you bring in your last moments? What matters most to you in this world? And how much shit have we accumulated that truly doesn’t matter one damn bit?


What I’d bring is my lap top and my phone. Maybe some sentimental mementoes if I really have extra time. Besides that, everything can be recovered and replaced after the fact. Even with my electronics I have them backed up and can replace them easier than the sentimental things.

Like that one picture of my Grandma when she was a little girl and covered in horse magazines. She fell asleep blissfully holding one with a smile on her young face. It’s beautiful, touching, and on the back of it is my Grandma’s scrawled writing saying it’s her only copy.

And, I get to have it, this singular picture on the planet of her in this moment of blissful sleep dreaming of horses.

That touches me always where my cold, dead heart beats seeing it. Seeing how alike we were as little girls.

Lying To Keep You From Worry

My father texts me about the storm. He’s a weather channel fanatic and so I haven’t been following what they’ve been saying.

“I’m concerned, MD.”

I look at his text and sigh. I know he cares, but I’m always the one reassuring my family everything is okay. When maybe it really isn’t, or maybe it’s not going to be okay at all. But they need that validation not to worry, so I lie.

I respond to his text with the fact I have an over excess of food. Batteries, lights, candles, water and all the bullshit of survival in a stupid ass catastrophic storm.

“How are you?”

So many times I’m omitting the truth from them lately. To keep my inner life, my private life, protected from being pried into. Because if I admit what’s happening I’ll be the latest on the family gossip column.

What I’m going through right now is severely fucked up. There’s elements of my life I’m so excited about it, and honestly terrified. I don’t know if I can handle this. But, I’m gonna damn well try to.

There’s three people, my closest friends, who know what’s happening to me. And they say to me:

And I shrug my shoulders in response, just saying I’m breathing, living, doing a career I love that I’ve missed for a year, and making the most of not being able to control anything.

Submitting to Mother Nature and her unpredictable nature makes us feel our humanity distinctly. That we are powerful creatures that have caused this world to submit to us and our power. But, still, she has the ability to destroy us in one breath.

What is Your Legacy?

We can be taken off this planet in an instant, that’s the crazy fact we gotta face. What legacy are you leaving behind where you have complete peace in facing that?


If you enjoyed this please click that handy dandy 👉👏 as much as you damn well please. As always thank you for reading! ❤️

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MentalDessert

Written by

I'm unapologetically me with a hard edged view of life. I love to travel and have crazy amounts of fun spaced between quiet moments.

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