How To Be Alone In A Hurricane

Well that was...something.

Welcome to Cheaper Than Therapy, a healing newsletter for 80s babies by Shani Silver. This newsletter does not publish free content, but if you’d like to read it you can subscribe here. Thank you for enjoying the work of independent writers.

A completely unedited photo I took during Hurricane Francine. The spirits told me I’d be just fine.

As I write this, it’s the morning after Hurricane Francine, my first in-person experience with a hurricane of any kind. In 2021, two months after I moved to New Orleans, Hurricane Ida hit, and I had to evacuate the city for 11 days. That’s a trauma to talk about some other time. For now, I’ve hunkered at home through my first storm, and the thing that stands out to me the most is not Francine herself, but instead literally everyone else.

In the mildest of terms, New Orleans is a unique place, likely the biggest small town in the world. Everyone-knows-everyone is a cute turn of phrase for Hallmark movies, and while it can feel that way sometimes, maybe the more accurate estimation is, “Everyone in New Orleans knows what it’s like to live in New Orleans—that makes us friends.” While the rest of the world remains largely uninformed, New Orleanians understand each other and above all else, they take care of each other. Especially when shit hits the fan. I lived in Brooklyn for eight years and never knew even one of my neighbors’ names. Ask me how many of my neighbors have my cell phone number now.