The LA Fires & A Looming Dread

I think I’ve finally reached the point where catastrophic news isn’t annihilating my psyche…

I’m watching scenes from dreams I had in the 70s, 80s, and 90s come true, over and over again. Now that horrific world I feared would someday be upon us is actually HERE. It’s not some nebulous, pessimistic nightmare– it’s manifested reality.

A little over a year ago, Hawaii’s Maui region was devastated by strong winds on a dry landscape that trapped and killed over a hundred people. Last week, hurricane force Santa Ana winds devastated Pacific Palisades and other areas around Los Angeles. Same scenario of strong winds and super-dry vegetation… it took very little to create a conflagration that’s burned many square miles of suburban landscape. Today, those winds are expected to strengthen again after a couple of days of respite. Firefighters from the western states plus Canada and Mexico are pouring in to help. Anyone reading this in the future will know the events I’m talking about.

The bad news is that these types of weather and climate related disasters are going to exacerbate a society and economy already pressed to the walls all over the globe. Already, insurers are dropping home-owners in disaster-prone areas like Florida and California. Even here where I live, our mortgage went up by $200 a month last year due to an increase in Cat’s home insurance. Like most people, the last few years have made things more expensive without granting much of an income boost to meet it, and we’re struggling a bit. Cat’s doing better with her retail therapy, but she still buys too much crap too often! The hard part is knowing we’re only at the beginning of the end of “normal.”

Last winter and spring, I was “taken” by my group of aliens or whatever they are, and they told me “it’s starting” and suddenly I was being seen two or three times a week for three months! I don’t know what exactly happened (but for a precious few seconds of memory that came back to me very recently) but I’m sure we talked about that. I got deeply depressed. We ran out of time, and I’m not ready! I’m middle-aged with chronic health issues, exacerbated by three bouts with long Covid that gave me almost a year total of time spent sick as a dog and miserable with migraines. How in the actual FUCK am I supposed to be able to do anything?!?! Clearly, all that time spent not home was for some purpose, but whatever we were discussing or doing overwhelmed me utterly. And the beings that keep interrupting my sleep aren’t helping, even though I’m sure they could. I don’t understand, but I am also helpless to do much in so many ways…

I’ve been coping (poorly) but it seems like I was also in a state of shock for a while there. I’m still reeling from it. One reason I haven’t been writing is that I’ve stopped thinking. I’ve stopped wondering. I’ve stopped speculating. I’ve stopped predicting. I’ve stopping planning. My entire world shrank down to what was right in front of me and trying to keep my shit together enough to get by day by day. I had an existential freakout, no question. Life just became so fucking painful! Even with Prozac, all I could do was put one foot in front of another and tackle one or two things at a time. I realized I needed to just distract myself as best I could and not give up.

Now there’s a weird, protective numbness that’s risen to the surface, allowing me to function cognitively without my emotions just hijacking my entire system into shut-down mode. I know that shit’s going to get SO much worse with fires and storms and floods and… just everything. I am baring witness to the process of the dismantling of a whole world’s way of things. And while I’m happy to say good-bye to some things, how can I feel good about real human, animal, and plant suffering? How can I prepare myself to live through such times, especially when I know we ain’t seen nothin’ yet!

The Resource Wars have already begun, and Trump’s seemingly silly threats about taking over Canada and Greenland (to get at minerals and fossil fuels under the thawing ice) aren’t empty words. There’s already a scramble for increasingly hostile rival nations to compete for access to what little is left. Ironically, the same Climate Change that is thinning and thawing the polar ice caps is beckoning the powers that be to drill for yet more fossil fuels that will contribute to further weather disruptions. The fight between those who want to stop this and those who want to profit at any cost is going to heat up– so to speak!

So as people get increasingly desperate, they’ll elect dumb fucks like we did and governments are going to go increasingly hard right, and as this happens, human rights and compassionate government will disappear. Political upheaval and things once unthinkable will become everyday. Of course I didn’t like hearing that we all just got on the Rollercoaster Ride Thru Hell, and all hope was… gone. Just gone. Too late. So sad. Oh well.

There’s more to the story, supposedly, which is where things get really freaky and everyone will get to meet the beings who take me… maybe. I don’t know what I can believe, honestly. Maybe I’m being lied to– that’s always a possibility. Regardless, the Rollercoaster Ride Thru Hell has begun, and that part it turned out was absolutely true, so “They” didn’t lie about that!

The gulf between those of us who have seen this coming for decades and those that could never imagine such things is vast, but I will soon see many others over the next decade just completely freak out as the reality they once knew breaks down into dust. Currently, the most populous county in the United States is getting hit– HARD. And they’re not out of the woods yet. Landmarks and history are being decimated, and a whole new population of homeless people has just been created. They’re lucky they had resources, most of them, to start again. But many others were dropped from insurance and lost their homes, jobs, and everything.

It’s taken me some time to stop feeling overwhelmed to the point of non-functionality. Now I’m getting brief windows where I can face this shit with some equanimity. But it’s a small step at a time, pulling myself out of the quagmire of desolate depression and frequent panic attacks. I’m on medication, I’m getting a little therapy and have a support group. But it’s still incredibly difficult to face all these things and know how bad it’s still going to get. I’m starting to get there, and if you’re still reading this blog then I know you must have deep curiosity and a great deal of patience!

One thing I CAN do through all of this..? I can help others face the same shit that has been freaking me out for decades. I know what’s here and what’s coming to some extent, so I’m processing emotionally ahead of the curve. That means that I get the existential freak outs sooner and I’m better when other people hit their freak outs. I know that facing hard things is easier if you feel heard and understood, so I can show that I get it, and I can just be the voice that is NOT in denial, or awash in toxic positivity, unable to believe it won’t get better any time soon. I can get back to the point of coping and semi-sanity just when others are losing theirs. So… I’m still here.

I’m still here.