Overwhelmed

I went running this morning. It was my first time back out there since before Irma. Gosh, was that only two weeks ago? It feels like another lifetime.

At about mile 2, I entered the marina in my city - you know the one, where the friendly cat comes running with me for a bit (she wasn't there today) and sometimes I stop to take photos like this:

St. Petersburg Municipal Marina at Demens Landing

And I stopped running. And I cried.

Like, ugly cried.

I couldn't tell you exactly what emotion I was feeling though.

I wasn't sad. I knew everything was fine, that St. Pete made it through Irma ok. Less than two weeks have passed since the storm, and I noticed during the first mile of my run that there's barely a sign that anything happened. Just some large debris piles still waiting to be picked up by the city. And some houses that still have plywood or hurricane panels on their windows.

And I wasn't surprised. Or relieved exactly. Like I said, I knew everything was fine. We're all ok.

It was just making that left-hand turn into Demens Landing Park where the marina is, and seeing the sunrise and how beautiful everything is, and seeing all the boats just floating there like they normally are, and maybe I had a particularly emotion-invoking song playing on my iPhone at the time... just made me think of what might have been, and I still can't get over how fucking lucky we all are.

I eventually recovered enough to finish my run, although it wasn't great, but I wasn't expecting much from it today. I just have had a really hard time finding the energy to get back out there since Irma came, so this was an important step in becoming normal again. And I do still have a half marathon to train for.

So at some point I'm gonna tell you my family's escape story, for sure, but I need to throw something out there first. This is what I don't need to hear:

"I'm glad you are safe, but if it were me, I would have left sooner."

Awesome. Good for you. When you're staring down "End of Days," feel free to do whatever you want.

I've heard this from a few friends and family after telling them what happened. There was certainly pressure from some of our family members up north to leave sooner. But those who have said something to this extent do not know the circumstances we were facing, and definitely do not know my family dynamic as intimately as I do. Even my husband has only known my mother and grandmother for 15 years... not 37 like me. And he knows I struggled with this, especially the day before Irma hit. There were tears.

So I'm going to try to help you understand first and foremost exactly what was going on and why we didn't... couldn't... leave Florida sooner than we did. Consider the following:

1. Predictions: Let's say you live on the West Coast of Florida. Everything said Irma was going East. It was the East Coast that needed to evacuate. Wouldn't you have left the roads clear for the people who truly needed to get out? It wasn't until the Thursday before that things started shifting West... and that Friday 5pm update that St. Petersburg was looking at a direct hit. 
2. Your "Bunker:" Say you've got a secure house. Yet another reason to let the people who need to find shelter do what they need to do. Our house is secure. As I mentioned, we're out of the flood zone and we were serving as the evacuation point for my grandmother, mother, and their pets. Our first floor is concrete block (although the second story is wood). We also had impact windows installed last year. It killed me to take out perfectly good windows in our new construction home to do this, but our builder didn't offer an impact window option. They were required by the state to provide us with "hurricane panels" to cover our non-impact windows, which is great... but with my husband travelling a lot for work, I didn't want to be stuck in a position where I'd need to climb a ladder to install these panels on the second story of our house. I didn't really want him climbing ladders to do this either. So even though we had the impact windows, we still decided to put the hurricane panels on the first story of the house for added protection when we were planning for Irma. But... we're in a neighborhood where most of the houses are quite old. Even if our roof stays put during a category 3 hurricane (we're putting a lot of faith in our builder), our house isn't going to survive someone else's roof blowing into it. But again... see scenario 1... we weren't expecting to get hit that hard until everything changed Friday night. 
3. Traffic: There was a mass exodus from Florida. There are only two major roads out of the state, and everybody on the East Coast was trying to flee. My friend told me a story about people she knew from Miami who had a flight out of Orlando to evacuate - and even though they left at 2 am, it took them 10 hours to get there when it should normally take 3.5. They missed their flight and couldn't get on any others. So traffic was bad, sure, but maybe that would not have been enough to stop you from leaving sooner. So how about...
4. Fuel: There wasn't any by the end of the week. How are you going to go anywhere if you can't get gas?
5. Animals: Let's say you have a full gas tank and maybe some spare gas in canisters and you can handle the traffic. Who is going to take you in when you have 5 cats and 2 dogs with you? Nobody, that's who. Cats do not travel well. They each needed to be kept in separate carriers, which don't leave a lot of space left for 4 people and 2 dogs, and the supplies needed to feed and care for all of the above. Oh, are you going to leave the cats behind? Cold, buddy. Pretend they are your children (or baby brother/cousin/niece/whatevs) who have no idea what's going on, because that is how everyone in my family feels about their pets. Then pretend you come home after a category 3 hurricane has demolished your house with your children inside. Leaving them behind is not an option to someone with even half a heart.
6. Exhaustion: Ok, so you've got the fuel and can handle the traffic and know someone who will take your entire family, including the animals. Keep in mind that you didn't just have to prepare your own house for a hurricane, though - you also had to help your mother prepare hers. Ben and I were so certain my mom and Grams's house was going to be destroyed, so we did everything we possibly could for them. This involved fighting for sandbags, trips back and forth to move Grams's artwork and other irreplaceable items to our house, and doing our best to save what we didn't move by getting things higher up - on top of beds, shelves, or covering it with plastic. Also, nobody in the family had been sleeping very well under all of this stress. So we were physically spent and there wasn't much energy left to give for what was likely going to be an extremely grueling road trip.  
7. A mother who isn't known for patience: So you're willing to make the drive, even though you haven't slept in a week and your body feels like it's been run over by a steamroller. Are you ready to handle what could be a twenty hour car ride with someone who develops instant road rage in any sort of traffic? My mother has so many amazing, wonderful qualities... and you'll see I've learned I can count on her to make the right decisions... but sitting in traffic with her is a very stressful situation. 
8. A 90-year-old disabled woman: And this is the ultimate challenge right here. Solve for all of the above, fine. But at the end of the day, what is it that Grams can really handle? Hours upon hours in a hot car with the stress of traffic and not being able to find fuel? Or at least being comfortable but not entirely sure if your roof is going to stay put? Also, guess where my mother's lack of patience comes from? 

So there you have it. My husband and I kept our eyes on the news... and as the days passed, we watched more and more of our neighbors leave... and we struggled knowing that leaving could be worse for us than staying. 

But when we woke up early Sunday morning and saw nothing had changed, that the last of our neighbors were also packing up and leaving because the models were still predicting a direct hit for St. Pete - we knew we were going to have some "End of Days" decisions to make.

So I dunno, maybe we should have left sooner.

After all, we were trading one set of stressors for quite another, as you'll see. 

Or... knowing what we know now... maybe we didn't have to leave at all.

Or maybe we left when we did and everything worked out better than we ever could have hoped for and we should just leave it at that.