RL: As Under
A year ago today my world split down the middle and one half fell away.
For years I maintained a foot in each of those worlds, straddling the threshold between the old and new, refusing to go any further or retreat. Then the earth chose for me.
In forty minutes the city I grew up in was torn apart, attacked by the ground on which it was built. People I knew died, were made homeless, were thrown around like dolls. Buildings I had known all my life fell like playing-card houses in a breeze. Hundreds of years of history and architecture was wiped out in under an hour.
The quake divided my family and friends into those who survived the disaster and those who were somewhere else, a rift that has yet to heal. It fractured the country into those who believe the city should rebuild and those who believe it should be abandoned.
In the lead up to this anniversary I am running out of time to commit, undergoing trial by paperwork to prove that I am safe. But the more I am pushed to prove I am not a threat to jobs, government or community in my new world, the more my thoughts turn to home and a city that no longer exists; at least not as I remember it. There can be no more retreating over the threshold.
You can never go home again.
To those I left behind and will never see again, you are remembered.
For years I maintained a foot in each of those worlds, straddling the threshold between the old and new, refusing to go any further or retreat. Then the earth chose for me.
In forty minutes the city I grew up in was torn apart, attacked by the ground on which it was built. People I knew died, were made homeless, were thrown around like dolls. Buildings I had known all my life fell like playing-card houses in a breeze. Hundreds of years of history and architecture was wiped out in under an hour.
The quake divided my family and friends into those who survived the disaster and those who were somewhere else, a rift that has yet to heal. It fractured the country into those who believe the city should rebuild and those who believe it should be abandoned.
In the lead up to this anniversary I am running out of time to commit, undergoing trial by paperwork to prove that I am safe. But the more I am pushed to prove I am not a threat to jobs, government or community in my new world, the more my thoughts turn to home and a city that no longer exists; at least not as I remember it. There can be no more retreating over the threshold.
You can never go home again.
To those I left behind and will never see again, you are remembered.