One Year Post

[fairykiss22]

I actually wrote this yesterday, so I could post it this morning before school on the official one-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina.  I've been trying to think of something to say for about a month now, because I've known it was coming and it was staring me down.

You knew this was coming, right?  For a while I considered not saying anything,

Comments

[hinter]

Oh, baby. *hugs so very very much*

You and I don't have that much in common. We shipped Neville/Luna together, once upon a time, before I fell more or less out of the whole HP fandom, but you know, I think the fact that I hopped onto TGSMT that one day may well have changed my life. Because that was where I came across you, and even if we share so little by now it's almost absurd, there's something we do share, and it's that, deep, core humanity that speaks to everyone alike -- and a penchant to express that humanity, if we can, in words.

I've never lived in a city. I've never been to Louisiana; I've never celebrated Mardi Gras. I've never believed in God or evacuated my home or switched schools. I've never endured anything like what you have, and I hope I never will, because I don't think I could ever be strong enough, not in a hundred lifetimes. But even so, I've read what you've had to say, and I've felt it, even when I couldn't imagine it. It's made me cry. It's made me believe in you, in New Orleans, in the world and in the human spirit.

Maybe you don't know. Maybe you never will. But there's one thing you've done that means more than you can possibly realize, and that is that you let us know. Here in my secluded little corner of Massachusetts, I've read your posts and felt maybe some tiny ripple of the massive waves of suffering you've endured. I've understood that little bit more of what Katrina truly is -- meant -- means. I've overcome the cynic in me, the part that might have forgotten by now if not for the occasional mention on the third page of the morning paper. I might have retreated into the insensitivity that is the plague of human souls. I might have forgotten that every single number in every single statistic is an individual who feels things as acutely and as completely as every single other person in the world. I might have never thought. I don't know if I'll ever understand, not fully, but I might never have been given the chance.

I've heard it said that people come into our lives for a reason, bringing something we must learn, and we are led to those who help us most to grow -- if we let them, and we help them in return. Well, I don't know if I believe that's true, but I know I'm who I am today because I knew you . . .