How to Live with Fear
In early October, wildfires began ravaging my county, and four others in Northern California. Thousands of people reacted at top speed both to escape the destruction and to aid those who came to be known as evacuees. As our safe town quickly sorted supplies and built a scaffold of support, we also tightly gripped our phones, newly armed with text alerts from Nixle: the official outlet for public safety alerts and notifications, mostly from our now beloved sheriff. By the end of the first day of chaos, most of us had subscribed by texting our zip code to the ubiquitous number. I haven’t stopped my Nixle flow yet; I may keep it forever.
I had only heard of the system before from a firefighter’s wife, but now everyone I knew counted Nixle as a top contact. Our phones pinged day and night with sheriff’s reports on the size of the fires, road closures, and evacuation orders for new neighborhoods. When Nixle was quiet, we opened our chosen weather apps to monitor wind direction and speed, zoomed in on satellite maps showing flame icons of various sizes, closed our windows and checked air quality on the internet, and scrolled Facebook looking for early tips of alerts to come. Even as we volunteered at evacuation shelters and ran around town trying to fulfill requests for sugar and new underwear, we waited in fear. Would the fire cross that last hill, would the wind blow too fast in the wrong direction, would the fire spread near before firefighters managed any containment? Some of us packed bags and loaded up the car. All of us wondered if we would be next. We were afraid.
Native Californians are familiar with this fear already; to them massive autumn fires are nothing new. I kept hearing about the Oakland Hills fire in the 199Os, and a similar wildfire which ravaged the same Santa Rosa neighborhoods in the 196Os, although the damage was not nearly as extensive given how much less inhabited the county was then. But fire is always a risk here in the fall, when rain hasn’t touched thirsty ground in months, and searing summer air has dried our bucolic green hills to a crisp, bleached brown. We live among rolling fields of kindling.
The second autumn after we moved to Petaluma from Chicago, my kids and I watched a wildfire burn. We were on the deck of our first rental home, at the top of a steep hill, looking across a little valley to an empty hill of open space between neighborhoods. We had a perfect view of the fight to control the fire. We saw the trucks barrel in where no cars usually go. We marveled as a plane dropped water, then clocked the time it took to fly off and reload to drop another spray. It didn’t occur to me then to be afraid, I didn’t understand that an unpredictable gust could blow embers past the firefighters and spread the fire like a malignant disease.
Of course I was going there; this is a cancer blog after all.
I will never again see a wildfire and not feel a hot flash of fear: where is the wind coming from, are gusts predicted, what’s the air temp, when was the last rain, when is the next one? This wildfire fear will likely always be present, as long as I live in this county, in this state, and remember the destruction of this October. I will feel it every time I visit my still-standing cancer center, just past the ashes of what was a Hilton, right after where the historic round red barn used to stand. The Round Barn gave me a little lift before I went in for chemo. I will miss it.
My fear lives a quiet life most of the time, settled in a shallow pool somewhere deep in my middle, behind the belly scars. I can forget about it for days, weeks even, just stumble along in my life as if cancer hadn’t forced its way into it in the first place. But sometimes it surges up like heartburn, poking into my brain with its taunt of evidence that something bad is happening. That mole is wrong, I think. My thyroid is enlarged, back pain is bone cancer, hardened scar tissue is really a lump. It’s back. It’s Back. It’s BACK.
The mechanism of fear is the same whether it’s fire or cancer. I didn’t understand that before. Once upon a time I tried to explain the fear of a recurrence by likening it to the constant threat of a California earthquake. It’s something you believe is going to happen again, but you don’t know when, how near, how big, how extensive. But now I might be able to explain it better — at least to local friends — in wildfire terms. Every day of my life I am waiting to hear from Nixle.
I learned early to live with constant fear. It was first introduced when my grandmother passed of cancer; exacerbated by my mother’s cancer when I was 13. I was afraid to find my own cancer when it struck at 28, and not at all surprised by its reappearance at 44. My fear will never go away entirely, and flares in some circumstances. The wildfire was such a circumstance: fire was its own raw fear since my first remembered nightmare as a child. Fire has always been a palpable beacon of destruction for me. As a child I once overheard my parents fighting underneath the sound of a popular song, playing perhaps to mask their angry voices. I didn’t recall the fight, but I remembered the song and would turn it off the second I recognized it on the radio. I told my husband, John, I hated the song because it made me feel like my house was on fire.
I was mostly paralyzed these last weeks. While friends spent days in a shelter kitchen or organizing spreadsheets of supply and demand, I tracked my son’s travels to and from school and angsted over him having to walk between buildings to get to class. I kept myself very, very still so as not to fan the fear into terror.
The fears aren’t irrational, but rooted in reality. Fires were decimating a neighborhood just like mine, mere miles away. Cancer could come back, anytime, without warning. But I don’t want to panic all the time, unnecessarily. I don’t need my bags packed in my car when a fire is not headed my way. I don’t need to run to the oncologist for every swelling or redness.
I have built a relationship with my fear. I talk to it, try to calm it down, take deep breaths and go slowly. I have to find reason and logic, and force them down fear’s throat. I have to be gentle with myself at the same time, understand my emotional reaction and don’t — as we say often in my house — freak out about freaking out. Of course you’re scared/anxious/upset/nervous/freaking out. Don’t Freak Out About Freaking Out. It’s a powerful mantra, feel free to borrow it.
The hardest part about a fear surge is although it feels like an alert from Nixle, it might only be a rumor on Facebook. It’s hard to know what is true, what is official, what is real. I found both my cancers through self-exam; I have some faith that I am my own best defense. I need to listen to my body, pay attention to its cycles and states to be aware when something is off.
I have to keep the fear in check so it doesn’t exist as brain-poking heartburn. I assess each surge, each alert, and dig through the evidence of what needs to be checked, to be watched, to be rejected. I deal with the evidence as needed, and send the fear back to live in the quiet pool behind my belly until next time. Someday the fear may save me; it could alert me to a real danger requiring attention. But today I can unpack my evacuation kit, pop an antacid, and take a deep breath of clearing air. I am safe for now.