what I remember (13 years)

The crushing spin of trauma and people in the world failing. A thick hot elixir of fear ballooning the body, bravery the bones holding it all up. Raw courage and loneliness, gut-wrenching, compassion-building loneliness. I remember all kinds of kindnesses and cruelties, the whole mess of humanity careening around non-stop. The oddest surprises! The family bible that had been underwater for weeks, the only inheritance from my mother, filled with the only photographs I have of my parents, surfacing in the great rumble and muck of my destroyed home untouched. Complete strangers posting $25 checks sent to my FEMA hotel. And family and old friends abandoning me, family and old friends rejecting me outright, utterly cruel. I learned the true way that the lived embodiment of trauma is literally too much for most people. Oh, for the privilege of it being too much -