I’m trying to get onto the 405 to get home, but all the freeway entrances seem to be blocked, construction vests and cones where there used to be open lanes. It’s not the only thing that’s changed. Old diners turn into fast food drive-thrus, Asian grocery stores turn into discount ones.

And yet I am not the same either. I am not the same girl who used to hug her mother after her father’s screams. Now a grown woman hugs her mother to be comforted from the burdens of everyday life: working, driving, networking. Why do the burdens of today seem so much less bearable than those of yesterday? My tolerance sinks as the ocean levels rise. Maybe one day our house won’t be a mile from the beach, but closer. The horror won’t be from the land lost, but at just how much everything has changed.