As anyone who’s ever lived on the eastern half of the Gulf of Mexico can tell you, there’s nothing quite as anxiety inducing as an incoming hurricane. That may seem self-obvious to the folks who haven’t lived here, because you’ve seen the countless tracking maps and rain-slickered weather reporters yelling into a mic over the sound of roaring wind, and you might think “man, that’s scary!”. What you don’t see is the countless hours of creeping dread leading up to that moment.
See, hurricanes are slow. Real slow.
In Tornado Alley, when that siren goes off, everyone knows it’s time to hit the cellar, and with a little bit of luck, the cyclone will pass on by in a few minutes. In California, when the ground starts shaking, tourists freak out a little bit while the natives grab onto something solid and wait it out, then laugh with sheepish smiles, shaking off the adrenaline.
But in Florida, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas, when that spaghetti model starts pointing in our direction, the anxiety begins. Not loud, at first…we keep a general eye on the conditions and the track. But as the models start getting more and more zoomed in on us, the adrenaline starts to spike a little bit. Five days out from landfall, everyone starts obsessively watching the updates, calculating trajectories, playing armchair weather reporter. Three days out, store shelves are emptying of water and batteries, along with beer and party snacks. Every hour of every day as the storm approaches, that adrenaline begins ramping up a little bit higher, until it’s a steady vibrating hum just below the surface of our skin.
The 24 hours before landfall are often as strange and eerie as when the eye of the storm eventually passes over you. With homes boarded up and businesses closing, everything gets very quiet, and you’re left alone with the negotiations in your head. It could weaken, it could turn away, it could turn inward and hit land somewhere south of you.
And then it begins.
It starts with wind howling through the trees, getting progressively louder. Hour after hour, it beats at your house, until joined by the rain, it grows into a roar. Your adrenaline spikes after every thunder crash, until you finally become numb to it. As the day turns to night, and you lose power, you sit in the dark unable to sleep as every cracking noise you hear makes you jump, wondering if that’s a tree limb coming down on your house. You huddle together with friends or family in silence, maybe lit by candles or a cell phone that still has power, assuming there’s a signal.
At some point, exhausted by the fear, you fall asleep.
Assuming you wake up the next day, you wander outside in a daze to measure the destruction, check on your neighbors, begin the laborious process of cleaning up. You feel like you’ve been through a war. According to your adrenal system, you have. It can take days to feel normal again, especially if the damage done has been deep. You hug your loved ones, and hope it doesn’t happen again anytime soon.
To those of you who suffer from various mood disorders, that pattern may sound familiar. Whether it’s the beginning of a downward spiral of self destruction, or a slow marching ascent to mania, it often begins with the self awareness that the storm is coming. And as it makes itself known, the anxiety begins. We march along doing our best to outwardly act like everything is fine, but inside, we’re taking inventory of our emotional shelves, and preparing for what we know is coming. It could be a week, it could be a day, or it could be hours, but we watch it approach landfall with the same sense of utter helplessness as those watching a hurricane bear down on their shores.
And the thing about the slide into self destruction is, it’s so damn slow.
Those of us who have the ability begin to board up our mental windows for what we know is coming, often withdrawing into ourselves in preparatory defense. We become quiet as the itch under our skin gets louder, and the anxiety begins to morph into annoyance and aggravation. We enter the phase where we negotiate with our own heads, or deny what we know is happening. Or maybe we ignore it entirely, hoping it just goes away on its own, but the longer it takes, the worse that sense of impending doom becomes.
And then the storm is upon us.
Sometimes we’re lucky, and the storm is lighter than expected, or shorter, or maybe it even passes us completely. But often, we’re not, and it begins in earnest. We’re swept along by the roaring frenzy, or disconnected in the dark as the storm seems to rage outside ourselves. We see the impact of our mood or behavior, but feel powerless to change it. We hear the tree branches cracking, and cringe in expectation of the roof crashing in. We hold back a scream as it seems to roar inside our head for sometimes weeks or months until finally, we collapse from exhaustion.
When we finally wake up, it becomes time to survey the damage. When a hurricane passes through, it looks like a bomb went off in your neighborhood. When a mental storm passes through, the damage is more often seen in the eyes of the people who care about you. You check on your loved ones, and assess for damage. You clean up the debris to the best of your ability, and take the boards off the windows. If you haven’t already, maybe you reach out for help. And it can take weeks to feel normal again.
Over time, after surviving a few storms, you get a little bit older and wiser, and you start preparing better. You install storm shutters, and elevate your house. You create early alert systems. You improve communications, and share weather updates with those you love.
But no matter how well prepared you are, when the radar inside your head starts going off, the dread begins. The storm is coming, and there’s nothing you can do to stop it. You grit your teeth to stop the vibration inside your skull, and prepare to wait it out.