Writing this post two days after Hurricane Milton passed within 50 miles of my home, I am struck by how absolutely exhausted I am. I have done some level of physical activity–putting up hurricane shutters with my husband, filling gallon bags with water (better than buying bottled), then taking down the shutters and doing yard clean-up–but it’s not that kind of tired. It’s brain-tired. It’s I-can-barely-focus-even-on-Grey’s Anatomy tired, much less grade anything or comment on anything or plan anything for work.

I think everyone who lives through this sort of thing experiences the highest level of decision fatigue.

I spent so much time between Sunday and Tuesday trying to figure out if we were going to put up the shutters or not; if we should evacuate or not; planning, guessing, second-guessing, third-guessing all the while knowing that people we love were very, very worried about us.

Part of that was the sensationalist hype of the media (please stop watching The Weather Channel. NOTHING they broadcast is useful to anyone actually living through a storm. The only benefit they provide is to Home Depot and/or Lowe’s). Part of it was that we were in the bulls-eye of a very weird, powerful storm and no one, I mean no one, could tell us where it was going to hit, or how hard. Every hurricane is a different experience, and they all seem to have virtually unpredictable minds of their own, which makes planning very difficult.

Here’s a diagram of Florida, a visual to help everyone understand my past month:

Two weeks before, Hurricane Helene was headed to Tallahassee. All the models agreed. We brought the kids home. And as it turned out . . . it did NOT hit Tallahassee. It made a “right turn” just a little sooner, and landed in an area that was severely impacted just last year. On the map, the closest city is Perry.

Now think about that. Every single predictive model said Helene was going to Tallahassee, and it hit an area about 112 miles south.

NO predictive model agreed on Milton. The range when we all had to start making our plans was between Cedar Key and Ft. Meyers. That’s a span of over 250 miles.

So on Sunday October 5th, here was the hurricane-decision tree, and we were on the green side:

By Sunday night, schools had decided to shut down for the week. My husband is retired, so didn’t have to work, but if he was still regularly employed he would have had to. So the majority of people on the West Coast of Florida, on Monday, even if they didn’t have to go to work, had to get their homes ready for the storm whether they decided to leave or not. We all woke up to predictions of landfall that now ranged from Tampa to Sarasota–about 50 miles, and remember direct-hit-to-Tallahassee-Helene ended up being off by twice that distance. We also learned it was probably going to land as a category 3 even though it was going to go up to a category 5 while swirling in the Gulf of Mexico.

For reference, a category 1 hurricane has winds from 74-95 mph; a category 2 from 96-110; a category 3 from 111-129; a category 4 from 130-156; and a category 5 from 157 and up. Most Florida homes are structurally built to withstand winds of at least up 110 miles an hour without shutters. So up to a category 2, most people are okay. Could bad things happen, like a sudden tornado, or a projectile flying through a window, or a tree falling on a house? Yes. But those things can happen during a tropical storm in Florida, just like the midwest has tornadoes and California has earthquakes and the north has blizzards.

Nevertheless, staring down a category 3, decisions had to be made, and most people on our coast were on the left side of the chart, leading almost completely away from decision tree #2 into decision tree #3.

On Monday, we could have evacuated. But we have hurricane shutters and a full house generator for when we lose power. We are prepared to ride out a storm, because for years I had an elderly father-in-law and my mother had an elderly partner who could not travel very far. Plus, we live over 30 miles inland from the coast in an area where people evacuate to when they have to run from the water. Milton was being forecast to hit either southwest or northwest of us as a Category 3 which is major, but with wind speeds our house was built to withstand.

If I was alone, I probably would have left because I’m getting to the point where my nerves can’t take it, but my mom and husband wanted to stay because they felt more comfortable in our own space and worried that, if we left, it would be really hard getting back. So I kept telling myself, “It’s a Cat 3. We can withstand a Cat 3 this far inland.” We put up most of the hurricane shutters (leaving only the ones off under our lanai so we could have some light for one more day), made sure we had enough propane in the generator, and I tried not to freak out.

Unsuccessfully. Because on Monday night Milton reached speeds of 180 mph in the Gulf. That’s one of the highest speeds recorded . . . ever. But, my favorite weatherman Denis Phillips said that there was going to be a cold front coming in that would knock those speeds down, and in Denis I trust, so I tried to breathe through my anxiety. Unfortunately, the best way to access the fabulous Mr. Phillips is on Facebook, and I stupidly read the comments full of doubters telling us everyone who stayed were going to die.

So here I was on Tuesday morning:

My husband put up the rest of the shutters. My mom made plans to come over to stay with us the next day. I had, quite honestly, something of a nervous breakdown. I watched the news–traffic going north and east was bumper to bumper. People feared running out of gas on the road and there was little gas to be gotten anywhere in town. My tank was full; we might have made it, but the window was closing and there were no hotel rooms or AirBnBs available. A dear friend near Tallahassee offered to put us up, but it would have been a real risk with the lack of fuel and the traffic. Another friend offered to put us up out of state, but the airport had already shut down.

So here was the tree, and this time I was on the right side even though I do have shutters. See that “Maybe?” Maybe I could leave? Do you see that purple box, where that leads?

Yes. I call it Hurricane Hell. It’s that space of indecision. Is it really safe? Can I really trust what I think I know? What if the hurricane ends up not weakening? What if it gets stronger? What if it hits more directly? Can my walls really withstand those winds? Can my mind really withstand this pressure? Why is everyone on Facebook (except Denis Phillips) telling us we’re all stupid and going to die? Don’t people survive Category 5 hurricanes with less preparation and protection than we have here?

And then it was Wednesday. The relief of being out of Hurricane Hell–because it was too late to leave, and we were as prepared as we could be to stay put–was destroyed by the knowledge that a category 5 storm was less than 24 hours away, though it had already shown signs of weakening. It was the moment of truth. Had I put my faith in the right information? I had no way to know. So all I could do was move to decision tree #5.

As it turns out, Denis was right. Milton didn’t speed up; it slowed down as predicted. A tornado killed people on the other side of the state before the hurricane even approached landfall, but when the hurricane did meet land, like Helene, it turned right. It came onshore about 50 miles south of us, on Siesta Key, where I’ve vacationed since childhood and where my mother lived for almost 15 years. I can’t look at pictures to see what it’s like there yet. It hit as a very large category 3, almost a category 4. And we were on the northeast side.

So here was the fun part. Milton had run into that cold front that made it less powerful, but it made the area of wind impact larger–and it slowed down when it hit land. So from about 8 pm until 2 pm we just heard those winds . . . and waited. The generator worked like a charm so I watched Denis and his News Channel 8 team track the progress of the storm. I saw the winds rip the dome off of Tropicana Field. I saw a crane crash down from a tall building in St. Petersburg. I watched the streets near my school flood.

Yet by me, despite the eeriness of the wind, everything was okay. The windows were fine. My home took no damage. My neighborhood had some trees down but none on houses or on cars. About 600,000 people across Florida lost power; ours is still out and as I’m writing this the house is still running on the generator. But people are getting their power back, bit by bit, and I think we’re all predicted to be okay by the time this publishes, or before. It’s not easy to get around town. Roads are flooding as rivers rise far away from the coast, because we had the equivalent of two summer months of rainfall in four hours, and that water has to go somewhere. Rivers are reaching the highest points they’ve ever reached. My mom couldn’t get back to her house today because one main road was completely flooded and the other had a tree blocking it. She’s okay; she’s staying with us, but it’s true that hurricane impacts are almost worse after the storm is gone.

And yet for all that stayed intact, my mind is a little broken. Because from Sunday through Wednesday my mind was rehearsing that 35+ item list above.

So maybe I’m not tired, per se. Maybe I’m numb. Maybe I’m still in that state of hyper-vigilance. Maybe I’m just mentally reeling. I mean, look at the slides I just made for you all. Is that not the #1 sign of my insanity?

But, there you go. Every time you see a hurricane heading to Florida, start with slide #1 and follow it to slide #5 and you’ll see what we’re all thinking (in reverse on slide #1 if it’s coming at the east coast of the state). And you’ll know that, every step of the way, we’re torturing ourselves with “what if?”

And also understand that an entire state cannot evacuate in three days. So if your loved ones decide to stay in the state and not drive or fly out, they are not crazy. So long as they are not in an evacuation zone on the coast of the peninsula, they have not been ordered to evacuate, and they tell you they are prepared to ride out the storm, just assume they’re doing what they judge is best. Because (though no one I personally know has ever done this to me, it has happened to others I know and love) to torture them with dire predictions of doom, when they already have those swirling around in their head, is making an already torturous situation almost unbearable for some and just an unnecessary distraction for others at a time when they need to focus.

Nevertheless, thank you to all of those who checked on all of us here in Hurricane-land before, during, and after both Helene and Milton. Thank you for loving us. Thank you for inviting us to come stay with you.

And thank you to all my local friends whose sense of humor kept me from completely losing my mind. Well, you and the occasional legal, prescribed sedative.