what happens at 5:58am

wee hours of December 19

There was an earthquake.

Right now.

My bed shook violently. Actually the headboard.

I heard it. For approximately one second.

And I’m alone in the house.

I lay still in the bed for about half a second; afraid that if I move it will hear me and comeback. Yeah! The earthquake is a hooman now.

Nothing struck me—the being alone in the house, running out to save my life, walking to the study to hide under the desk, or anything at all. I hear a bunch of drivers talk and laugh outside. They probably didn’t even feel it.

Like a true-blue millennial I opened Twitter to tweet about it but ended up checking trending news. No mention of the earthquake. Where is the earthquake news when you feel it for the first time ever?

A South Korean boy band’s lead singer has died, the trends tell me.

My fellow city mates must’ve been sleeping or virulently preparing themselves for a morning run or bath or whatever.

Here’s how you grow up—alone, in a city full of relatives and cousins visiting from other countries, the headboard shaking violently like it shook the last time when your crush and you had sex, and you none other than empty WhatsApp chat boxes to key these feelings int.

I should write one of those fancy New Yorker pieces that may or may not go viral and make hay of my precise seven seconds of epiphany after THE epiphany about life hit me, not literally.

People have their own stories about when they first felt the earthquake in this city. Maybe I’ll discuss this with someone tomorrow. Or maybe this will become one of those many, many things I only wrote about and never really spoke to anyone about.

Twenty minutes later

It’s the peeps in the apartment upstairs who I can now hear clearly, that are talking—not the drivers outside on the road. And maybe they were having sex and probably that’s what I heard as the headboard shake.