I was watching some Tik-Tok, as you do, and someone asked one of those questions that makes you think long and hard. If your house was on fire, and you could only take one thing, what would it be? This is also with the cavitate that your family and pets are safe. What is something you’d be horribly upset to lose?

The more I think about this the more I struggle to come up with an answer. Most of what I have is just stuff. It’s all replaceable. The few things I consider precious I’ve backed up in some digital format: my laptop, photographs, even a copy of the family ancestry book are all in the cloud. Would losing the originals of those things suck? Yeah, of course, one-hundred percent. But I still have backups.

Perhaps the box I have of old journals. While capturing the proliferation of my youth into adulthood, I’d be less mortified by their contents if they burned than if someone stumbled upon them and read my angst. I have some art that I love but I would not break without them.

I’m left feeling torn by this. Should I be more upset at the idea of losing all my possessions? Does it indicate a better sense of emotional self-preservation that I’m not? Or is it a sign of apathy?

After a lot of consideration, I think I’d take my Great Grandma’s jewelry box and if I couldn’t also take the contents, most of which is costume jewelry, I would take her pearls specifically. I always imagined passing them down to a daughter or a niece someday on their 18th birthday, the way I was supposed to get them. The way all the women who came before me got them. I’ve never worn her pearls but I like to imagine I’d wear them on my wedding day. They’d be my something old.

Hopefully, your girl has lived through enough fires for one lifetime.

What is something you’d be horribly upset to lose?