The house that wasn’t mine burned down without me in it.

It was around 5am in the morning when my sister busted into my room “Katie, wake up.” I instantly knew something serious had happened because my sister never busts in like that, that earnestly, that intensely, so I immediately pulled myself from my slumbers and jumped out of bed “what’s the matter?” whilst pulling out the other earplug that hadn’t fallen out during the night.

“Our house burned down…. er….. not this one, the other one.”

Side note: our parents just got divorced and we had to sell our house, so a kind family friend was going to let us temporarily stay in their farmhouse in the country until we could get back on our feet, so we had been moving. everything to their house, aside from a few clothes and odd items, we had basically moved over there.

I immediately entered the surreal life feeling, the calm internal panic, the strange sense of composure and control you get when you are in a traumatic situation.

She showed me the pictures of the house engulfed in flames, pictures taken just two hours before by the neighbor during the lightening storm. The neighbor said that the house had completely burned down within ten minutes.

It was like a Wednesday or Thursday at the end of August, and my sister was in her first week as a senior in high school, and I had my summer job to go to, while job hunting for that wonderful recent grad career. My mom was planning on going to the house later on that day to take a few more things over.

My sister and I quickly agreed to not say anything until she had left for school, and that I would tell my mom after she left.

Still in shock, thinking “of course this would happen.” We said goodbye to my sister and sat down for breakfast. I am not one to sugar coat stories, so when I have to make any sort of announcement, it’s never graceful. My mom started listing off things she was going to take over to the house, making plans to meet me there after my work and that we would go swimming.

At that moment, I felt very sorry for my mom. Being on one side of some information that she didn’t know. I think I fully realized the “ignorance is bliss” quote at that time.

“Mom, I have to tell you something, and you’re going to be upset.” And then I started crying. I regained my composure. “Mom, the house is gone; it isn’t there anymore. It got struck by lightening and burned down last night in the storms.”

Disbelief, “Are you joking?”

Solemnly, “I’m sorry, it’s gone. Everything is gone.”

The first thing that popped into my mom’s head was “Oh my gosh, all of our toiletries.” (I guess the most recent thing she had taken over were her toiletries lolz.)

And then I just sat there as it slowly hit her, “oh my gosh, this, oh my gosh that,” as if a thousand rugs were being pulled out from underneath her.

As I drove to work, I was just overwhelmed by the irony. We were finally feeling secure about having a place to live, and then it burned down. I kept secretly hoping a cop would pull me over just so I could say, “I’m sorry, I was distracted by my house burning down last night.” But then again, it wasn’t really my house, just all of my possessions. Like, how do you explain that? Should I even be upset?

Throughout the day at work, I carried on as normal, greeted clients, helped them with their inquiries, chatted mindless conversations, they left satisfied. It wasn’t until we had a down moment and were organizing the store when I mustered up enough courage to tell my coworker what had happened. I felt that the longer I could hold off on verbalizing the situation, the less true it would actually be. I remember feeling so awkward. “Oh hey, how are you doing, good, um, our house sort of burned down last, but I’m fine.” No, I don’t need to go home, there’s nothing I can do about it, working will preoccupy my thoughts.

Throughout the next few days and even weeks, I would have moments of “oh, I lost this, I no longer have this.”

The main loss that we had were our photos. All of our photos. ALL OF MY FREAKING CHILDHOOD PHOTOS. Gone. Anything pre-Facebook, gone. My kids will never know what I looked like as a child. My future husband (I know he’s out there) will never be able to see how cute I was.

I’ll never have photos to show people whenever they start showing their childhood photos. I distinctly remember 7 times this has happened in the past two years. I would be with a group of friends, they would start showing their photos, and I’d sit there quietly and ooh and ahh at how cute they apparently were. Only once did someone casually ask, where are your photos? Really, no one took notice of my lack of photos to show, but for me, every time was like sitting through some torturous reliving of the mental trauma that followed the event. I have finally come to terms with it and can be at peace when these scenarios come up.

I think that’s what’s been the most difficult, understanding that people don’t understand, and having to not be offended when you feel offended. With every traumatic experience, I think that is one positive reaction I am learning: to not be offended.

Anyways, I had spent that entire summer carefully organizing all of the photos, all of my books from university, all of my precious ceramics, and my sister had even set up her room with her precious memorabilia, so she lost a lot more than I did. I literally spent the entire summer organizing and caring for everything that would be burned. In hindsight, I think of it as a ritual I performed to prepare my treasures for their burial. They were perfectly organized to be destroyed.

I remember searching for people’s stories about losing their homes. I wanted to have some insight to the range of emotions that I would experience and how to logically deal with them. Unfortunately, I didn’t find much. I did find a Ted Talk by a woman who had lost her home twice, so that was helpful. I think I really wanted to find a step by step Day 1, this is how you will feel, Day 2, you will realize this, Day 3, have you thought about it this way, Day 4, please don’t jump kind of thing, but there isn’t a guide book on “how to process a sudden natural disaster.” Everyone is different, every scenario is different, I understand that.

That brings me to another point. All of the traumatic situations in my life before had happened gradually. I was able to anticipate the end and slowly prepare, but this one was like a rogue wave. I think that’s why it was so weird because it wasn’t like some nightmarish lifestyle that I had been living for years. It was more like someone quickly scalping you for no reason. It was a different kind of pain because it was an external, disassociated event that had happened at random.

I think after every time I realized one of my losses, I had to remind myself that it was replaceable, and the things that weren’t replaceable, they were still, after all, just objects, no matter how precious I valued them to be.

One of the main feelings I had was violation.

It was a destruction of my property and a violation of my peace of mind, thinking that I could be safe. And who’s to blame? A natural disaster. So it was quite silly being mad at a natural disaster — it could have been worse.

I had nightmares for weeks afterwards.

I had slept at that house a few nights before. That was the scariest thought: knowing that I could have been inside that house when it had happened. I probably would have drunk too much wine before going to bed (relaxing in the new luxurious home, still processing my parent’s divorce and other things) and wouldn’t have woken up in time. The doors all had separate keys that you had to use from the inside, and I doubt that the fire alarms had working batteries. That thought still haunts me to this day. So, what do I do to shake it off? I remind myself that we can’t fantasize about the what if’s. I’m alive, and that’s all that matters.

I dealt with this trauma with my mom and sister by my side and encouragement from a bible study group, but I still feel like that wasn’t enough.

In a way, I almost blew I’ver the entire situation because I didn’t want my future employer that I was interviewing for to think that I was mentally unstable, and I didn’t want to lose friends because they were tired of hearing me process the situation, so I mainly kept to myself about it, which is also unfair.

I just felt like people were intently scrutinizing me to see how I handled the situation, especially people at the church. I was like, it’s okay for people to go off the deep end sometimes, it’s how they can process. And it’s not necessarily bad that they do — I think it helps them find an equilibrium — really, give them a break.

At first, I didn’t want to go back to the house to see it burned to the ground, but I thought that it would be good closure, so after four days of smoldering, the fire crew allowed us onto the property. We went early in the morning to escape the sweltering Texas heat. We shoveled a bit, but then I realized that burned asbestos dust was probably not a good thing to breathe. I had a forlorn hope that our box of pictures had somehow managed to survive lol, but I did find a few of my ceramics. Out of everything that had survived, it was the twice baked in the kiln ceramics haha. Obviously my books were gone.

Everything was gone. I felt rather silly walking in my rain boots with a shovel in the midst of a burned down house. I didn’t have a personal connection to that house, per say, but more so in the hope and temporarily secure future that it would have provided us.

Every house burning story is different, though I believe all to be traumatic. You will survive. You will learn how to let go whether that be gracefully or un gracefully, it really doesn’t matter: you do you. You might accumulate more crap, or you might realize that you really don’t need anything. It’s okay to be emotional; it’s okay to be mentally unstable; it’s all okay because it’s all temporary. Everything is temporary: your house, your things, your moods, your relationships; it just depends on time, and it’s okay to spend more time on one thing than another. I’ve realized what’s important to me, and almost in a callous way, I don’t need much.

The house that wasn’t mine burned down without me in it, and I’m here.