lie no. 22 | 06.11.19

Last fall I left home without a plan or a timeline and drove south—it wasn’t the first time I’d done this, nor would it be the last.

I wasn’t running away from anything or anyone, although I struggled to articulate that at the time. I didn’t yet understand I what I was running toward.

Her name was Florence, and I couldn’t take my eyes off her. Maybe it was our resemblance: What she lacked in strength, she more than made up for in determination as she left a path of destruction in her wake.

It wasn’t the first time I found myself obsessing over a natural disaster. As someone who craves control and certainty, there’s something mysterious and mercurial about Mother Nature that makes it hard to look away.

But Hurricane Florence was different. She was about to hit home—in more ways than one, I’d later learn. 

As I watched the storm barrel toward eastern North Carolina, it’s as if I already knew everything the tide had dutifully taken out to sea over the years was about to be violently whipped back up.

The night before Florence made landfall, I couldn’t put my finger on why my unease seemed to strengthen as the storm weakened. My people in her path were safe. Property damage would be a headache, but ours is a second home, so even if the storm blew the roof off, we’d still have others over our heads—a guilt with which I’d later be forced to come to terms.

I felt helpless for those who did choose to stay in her path and those who couldn’t afford to lose their roof. The blue tarps adorning so many of them would go on to haunt me for months to come, until one day they nearly all disappeared.

I felt helpless for myself but didn’t understand why. As I watched her approach from hundreds of miles away, I felt an unfamiliar tug, pulling me out of the depths I felt safe in.

I’d had a home on the coast long enough to know the silent killer of these storms comes from rapid rises in water levels, rather than the storm itself. The strength of a surge is dependent on the shallowness of the water relative to the storm’s path. The already receding coastlines in the floodplains of eastern North Carolina make it easy for these storms.

I should know—I’d been playing it safe in dangerously shallow waters for far too long, myself receding from the darker, deeper waters beyond.

It was in those waters I first suspected my father had a secret. Never did I imagine the double life it included—one that decidedly did not include me, my mother or brother—two islands down from the one we called home.

Even that day we took the boat down to have lunch on her island, when my father knew the way, like he’d been there before.

Even when he expertly navigated our boat through the canals after lunch to get to her house, like he’d been there before. 

Even when he went inside to use the bathroom and didn’t ask where it was before going in, like he’d been there before.

Being a highly observant person is a liability. The more you pay attention, the more you realize no one else is.

Now, as Florence settled into her unnaturally slow saunter, seducing the coast, memories started racing through my mind, like they’d been there before.

Unable to sleep and lost in storm coverage, the remembrance reel got stuck on an especially vivid day at the end of the summer after I’d graduated college. It was the kind of memory you recognize before it’s even in full view, no matter how long it’s been since you last saw it. I’d refused to look at it for a long time. Now I couldn’t help but stare.

I saw myself and my brother in our parents’ kitchen that day as they broke the news—me, days away from moving to DC to start my life, the ink still drying on my diplomas, my brother heading back soon to finish earning his.

The day I learned I could lose my father—to stage IV colon cancer—was the same day I realized I’d already lost him, to her.

I battened down the hatches on my heart so tightly that day. Nothing could get in, nothing could get out.

I’m sure discussions of treatments and surgeries followed the diagnosis that day. All I remember, though, is the makeup on the collar of my father’s baby blue polo that wasn’t mine or my mother’s—and that post-doctor appointment stop he had to make.

I’m also sure dozens of friends and colleagues came to visit him in the hospital and at the house in the weeks that followed his first surgery. I only remember her tearful visits.

At 22, I still idolized my father. Even still the next year when the proof I never wanted forced my hand when it landed there. If he could pretend that he’d survive this, why couldn’t I pretend I’d survive that? If he could pretend none of it, the cancer nor the affair, were happening, why couldn’t I too?

Fortunately, he would go on to successfully fight off the cancers growing in him—even if he was fighting them for someone else, for someone other than us. 

It’s confusing to simultaneously mourn the end of the only life you’ve ever known and celebrate the survival of one you’re realizing you no longer do.

I didn’t know how to do both back then so I chose to see only what I wanted and swallowed my voice.

As the water started to recede down east last fall, something continued to rise in me. I loaded up the car with supplies and donations as soon as the roads into eastern North Carolina reopened.

I told family members who offered to join me in the relief efforts to stay put; they’d only get in my way—true of both the relief I was extending and the relief I was seeking, not that I realized the latter at the time.

It took a natural disaster all these years later for me to begin mourning the loss of my family.

It never occurred to me to batten down those hatches around my heart before going down to help my community rebuild—maybe because I moved so fast or maybe because I’d kept it boarded up year round for so long.

Only months later did I realize I must’ve taken the boards down at some point and not noticed. Or more likely, I’d stopped putting them up. Either way, at the time, a hurricane felt like an unfortunate place to find my heart cracked open, exposed to all the elements. Turns out, it was the most perfect of places for it.

There are no models or professionals to forecast the storms brewing inside of us. I should’ve seen this one coming, it had been lurking just offshore long enough, but I’m so glad I didn’t. I wasn’t prepared to weather it so I didn’t have a chance to try and control it—or run like hell from it.

One of the appeals of seeking the safety of the shore’s shallower waters—playing it safe after a crisis, never going deeper than the surface—is you don’t need anything or anyone to hold onto to stay afloat. The notion that standing on your own two feet without anyone’s help is the fallacy of strength. 

It’s terrifying to unexpectedly find yourself out of your depth and desperate for something or someone to cling to, to rescue you, to pull you to safety. It feels as if even the waters you swim in start to deceive you, to let you down, as it slips through your fingers.

But then you remember you can’t lose your grip on the sea. You never had it in the first place. Much like how sand slips through an hourglass, time, too, is out of our control.

Last summer I suddenly found myself out of my depth and treading water—buoyed by what I now see as a newfound confidence and the freedom that comes once you start to value yourself. When I felt I had nothing to cling to, it scared the hell out of me, then it wore me out.

Treading water is exhausting. We tread it when we have to, for survival. We tread it when we can’t see the shore and don’t know which direction to go in. We tread it because, sometimes, it’s the only way to keep our head above water. It’s also the treading that helps us appreciate the sun even more.

One day, I looked up and remembered the sun is always there. It rises and falls every day, even in the midst of the most intense storms. It always shows up, just like clockwork, because eventually even the darkest of clouds pass. 

That’s when I realized there’s not much that separates swimming and treading—both require energy and constant movement. Only one requires the strength and determination to progress even when, especially when, you don’t yet know where you’re going.

We didn’t discuss it at the time, but those eight days were the longest stretch I’d ever been away from Matt—a record we’d go on to tie in January then smash in February. In that time away, things started to make sense again.

In more ways than I was capable of admitting or appreciating at the time, I’d made Matt my life preserver. Forever indebted and grateful for the buoyancy he no doubt provided me in some seriously rough seas, I ultimately knew—because he helped me remember this—no one could swim for me. It was my choice: swim on or continue treading.

I witnessed the most soul-crushing and soul-feeding moments while down east last fall, too many to count. But two in particular took up permanent residence in my heart.

First, I watched—what I imagined to be—a father and young daughter traipse through a cemetery totaled by downed trees. I couldn’t see their faces any clearer than they could see the headstone they seemed to be searching for.

Later that day, as I drove back through the same town, I could’ve sworn I saw the same father and daughter dancing in a parking lot. At first, offended for reasons I couldn’t understand, I instinctively looked away. Who dances at a time like this? Only then, distracted by the bright lights of the school behind them, did I see what the sign illuminating their asphalt dance floor said:

"When life gets you down, you know what you gotta do? Just keep swimming.—Dory”

I came back home the next day, finally ready. Somehow the prospect of turning around, of turning away, felt harder. 

Plus, Matt got us tickets to a concert I couldn't wait to see: Her name was Florence. 😉