Reading · The Lovely Brains Newsletter

Last night, the earth rumbled—one brief shake, forward and back. A couple of barely perceptible temblors followed. Although a minor 3.5 magnitude, my body braced for impact, remembering the 5.7 that hit a week after COVID lockdowns began.

That morning my sister ran into my room to rouse me. I have no idea how she navigated the ten steps to my door while the earth was shaking that hard. I must have been deep because I didn’t even register what was happening; the ground stopped shaking as soon as I put my feet over my bed. I certainly would have slept through it without her alarm, but I wasn’t able to wake up fast enough to move effectively.

The rest of the day and for days following, the aftershocks came. Each time the earth recalibrated, a whooshing wind moved across the valley. I could hear it coming and knew for sure it was an aftershock once the living room shutters shook. Aftershocks can happen even centuries after the first quake. Was last night’s one of them or a harbinger of a bigger quake to come?

In acute disaster situations I’m a freezer. I shut down. My body basically thinks I should ride it out or play dead until the threat passes over. Last night I kept sitting still in the chair where I felt it. My mind evaluated with groggy slowness whether someone had rammed a car into a house or if there had been an accident next door that would cause my house to shake. I waited to see if the ground would keep shaking, proof that I had felt a quake, the point at which I’d do something. What I don’t know.

No matter how many times I review earthquake safety I can never remember what to do, especially on the fly. Stand in a doorway? Don’t stand in a doorway? Get under a desk, like every elementary earthquake drill, the drills I’ve forgotten until now? Yes, that’s the one. From the last time I looked this up I remember that you shouldn’t run outside. I’m pretty sure I’m just supposed to hunker down the best I can and protect my head. I’ll look it up (again) and practice diving under tables throughout the day.

Freeze, flop, and play dead are not convenient responses in disasters requiring quick action, but it’s the best my body can do. It believes it’s the most sensible way to keep me alive. I am most mobile in the phase after an acute event. After the initial survival, I go hard into the fight/flight of making everything okay—running scenarios, gathering supplies, strategizing for the next action that needs to be taken.

I don’t know if I believe in end times exactly. But I do believe in ends and earth shattering events. I do believe that what breaks may never be made whole again in quite the same way. That 2020 quake cracked the brick in my parents’ house. I do believe in rebuilding, scar tissue, and neighbors’ generosity. After came the offers of generators from friends and neighbors to keep our refrigerator running. We were comfy, even by candlelight.

The earth is quaking, America is quaking. We will be quaking and after-quaking for years to come. I am by turns paralyzed and mobilized to no end in particular, in one exhausting merry-go-round. My body has still not settled down from the quake of my TBI. Any emotional or psychological shock has the ability to set me right back on the rickety cartoon tracks leading through a mine. Either the coal wagon breaks won’t work as I clatter on pell mell, or I’m the last miner out of the mine, sluggish from the fumes after the canary has died. It’s. A lot. I’m trying to delete my Facebook to handle it, and Instagram and TikTok, too.

The hunkering down has begun.

How are you doing, though? I know I’m far from the only one on this unbearable ride. Let me know how you are. I’ll try to write more here as I am able. And here, a parting charm, from St. Teresa: