Hollywood has this way of conditioning us to expect certain situations to play out in somewhat predetermined ways. The start of a six-alarm fire, for example, is often marked by frantic, repeated screams of "FIRE!" followed by the requisite pounding on doors and panicked pleas to get out of the burning house.
It's only natural, therefore, that on June 8, 2000, at 3:20 in the morning, when Kristin S. of San Francisco heard her housemate state, "fire," in a somewhat monotone, practically deadpanned voice, she first reacted with dazed confusion. While she tried to separate reality from dream, Kristin's windows exploded and the curtains in her room became engulfed in flames. Kristin wasn't dreaming…and she certainly wasn't on any Hollywood soundstage.
"Everything happened very fast," said Kristin. "I got our roommates out of the house and we all made it out to the street, literally by the skin of our teeth."
There is an interesting twist to the story, however; this wasn't just any house. These weren't just any roommates. It turns out that there is a bit of Hollywood in this real life thriller.
Kristin and her roommates were living in the house made famous by the third season of MTVs "Real World" in 1994. When Kristin and her housemates moved in, they too, were players, only this time it was for an Internet-based reality program called Spotlife. Kristin and her housemates lived most of their in-house lives on camera, wrote in their online journals and hosted nightly chats with viewers. They were what happened when "Real World" met the Internet. "I really didn't know these people very well," recalls Kristin. "We were cast mates as much as housemates."
On that night in June, however, their online fantasy world was very real.
There are many ways one can emerge from near-death experiences, any number of aha moments one might have – all of which are understandable. Kristin recounts that one of her housemates never really recovered from the experience, and when Kristin ultimately lost contact with him, he was suffering from addiction and depression and living out of his car. Another of her housemates just "completely shut down and vowed to never talk about the fire again."
After losing absolutely everything ("I had to start over again with things like socks; who thinks about buying socks?") and walking around in something of a fog for two days ("I went to work the day after the fire, because I didn't know what else to do."), Kristin had her first aha moment.
As she describes on her video and recently recounted in an interview on FoxBusiness.com, two days following the fire, "It hit me like a ton of bricks," she told writer, Nancy Colasurdo. "It finally sunk in. I remember screaming in my car, ‘I'm here. I came out of this burning house. I'm alive.'" Kristin had her life.
The gifts and lessons of the fire were just beginning.
She started a gratitude journal, taking a few minutes everyday to write down the things for which she's grateful. As a result, she says has a better understanding of her own life, as well as the lives of the people around her. She has became more open, more truthful ("I always think now that if it were all to end, have I said everything I needed to say?") and more willing to experiment, which is the very thing that led her to her second aha moment.
In the years immediately following the fire, Kristin was understandably nervous around any kind of fire. If there were candles lit at a friend's house, she would ask if it were okay to blow them out. Admittedly somewhat naively, Kristin accepted an invitation to the largest outdoor art festival in the world, the famed Burning Man. (She didn't realize that the conclusion of the festival was marked by actually burning a giant art installation.) It was there that she saw people actually dancing with fire. "I wanted to stop them. Didn't they know how destructive fire was?"
She returned to the festival year after year, each time getting closer to the fire dancers. Finally, she realized, "it was time to move through my fear." She did so by training to become a fire dancer and learned Poi, which is what the dancers were performing at Burning Man. Ultimately, Kristin even performed at the festival.
"I've seen the reactions on people's faces as I'm dancing and it brings me so much joy to bring joy to others," says Kristin. "My husband told me how I had transitioned from victim, to survivor…to warrior. I like that."
"After the fire, I met with an American Red Cross counselor who gave me the best advice of all," Kristin recounted. "She said, ‘don't rebuild your life the same way.'" And, as she told FoxBusiness.com's Colasurdo, "All that really matters is we have each other. Fire has given me that gift. I'm really grateful that it happened." She concluded, "Fire purifies, or it destroys. In some ways, it purified me."
With so many lessons learned, Kristin is now married with a happy, healthy two-year old boy. And, it seems, is enjoying her own typical Hollywood ending: living happily, ever after.
