I’m Permanently Damaged, Thanks to Climate Change
The trauma doesn't go away.
Today — November 8th — is the fifth “anniversary” of the 2018 Camp Fire, which killed 85 people, destroyed 14,000 homes, and wiped the town of Paradise, California off the map. And recently — five years in — I’ve come to realize that I am permanently damaged, permanently broken, because of my experience in the Camp Fire.
I always thought — assumed really — that I would heal, eventually, and go back to “normal”, to the old, pre-fire, me.
But I realize now that that may never happen. It probably won’t.
Just as climate change survivors never fully recover economically from a climate disaster, it turns out that they may also never fully recover mentally or emotionally from a climate disaster either.
I haven’t.
Before the fire, I was one of those guys: confident, self-assured, cocky even. Not fearless (because I’m not stupid), but free of fear.
I’d never suffered a major trauma.
My parents were happily married for 62 years. I had a stable, middle-class, Ward and June Cleaver, childhoo…