6 months on
I don't know what I expected to feel today but it certainly wasn't the way I am feeling. I am unsettled and anxious, waiting for something bad to happen and it's also there on the faces and in the body language of the people I see around me. The tension is just sitting in the air and it's infectious - I haven't felt tense like this in a very long time. For the most part the kids are okay. I don't think people have really discussed with them that it has now been 6 months, but the adults sure know. It didn't help that while I was dropping my kids off to school, and was in Miss 5's classroom getting her settled for the day, a 4.2 quake rolled in. It made an already unsettling day that much more unsettled. I'm waiting for something that will probably not come, but my body remains on edge ready to respond if/when something happens. I will be very thankful when this day is over.
It seems weird to focus on today as well, because of course February 22nd wasn't the beginning, but it was an ending - and in a sense it was a beginning; the beginning of the new life where it wasn't over and uncertainty now reigned. On the morning of February 22nd I was happy, I'd sort of got past the stress of the September quake and had started to really enjoy living again. I'd stopped doing the monthly LJ updates on where we were post-quake, but I was planning a special 'it's been 6 months; how are we doing now?' post to celebrate making it that far and getting on the road to recovery. It was a pretty joyful time, actually. People around me were out there, having fun, getting on with life and basically trying really hard to help the city revitalise. I'd been playing with words in my head and was pretty excited about what I was going to write. It was still over a week from the 6 month anniversary but I was pretty positive about my life, about the city and about the future. That 6.3 shake at 12.51 changed all that of course. The sense of security I'd had was wiped away in 24 short seconds. There was no way from then on to say 'well we had the big quake and we're past the worst' because in a very brutal way I was shown that we weren't past the worst and if that one could be worse than September, then the next one could be worse again and so on. I'm not surprised that people left the city - it didn't feel safe anymore. Before then aftershocks had been discomforting, an annoyance and an irritation that I'd learned to live with, but after that they took on a feeling of menace as if each one was saying 'I'm not big, but I could be and the next one could be bigger so stay on your guard' and of course, just to prove that, June 13th hit and again shattered any sense of peace and any feeling that we could just get on with it. February 22nd was the end of complacency, the end of feeling like we'd dodged a bullet, of feeling like Mother nature had been kind to us. We learned then that September, far from being 'the big one,' was actually just a dress rehearsal to make sure we were paying attention.
I was going through Foursquare the other day and found my old checkins and it was spooky to see the one for February 20th. That day
cyphomandra and I were at Java cafe with another friend, sitting upstairs. To get up there you climbed a fairly rickety spiral staircase and the floor was one of those ones that sort of hangs on for dear life from the walls. It didn't extend all the way across the shop and it was quite springy. The friend was a bit twitchy and anxious about it because up there was literally nowhere to hide in the case of a major earthquake and she was convinced the whole place would come down in a big shake. We laughed at her, thinking she was being silly; there was no reason to fear a big quake. To appease her we worked out a plan of what to do, which involved overturning couches and huddling together under them. Now I look at pictures of that area and I shudder. The landscape is so changed that I don't even know which building housed Java anymore, but it doesn't really matter. None of the buildings on that corner look particularly healthy. I don't want to think what it would have been like if that quake had struck that day. I do know that I'll never sit in a place like that again without having some sort of mental plan as to what I'll do, and it won't be to appease someone I think is being over-anxious. It will be to appease myself. I do miss that person I was though, the person who was supremely unconcerned about big quakes because it just wasn't going to happen. Yes I knew we still had a chance of a 6+ aftershock hitting, but I really didn't expect it as the odds were so comparatively low. Now we're sitting on around the same odds again and this time I almost expect that it will happen. It has, after all, happened twice already now.
It's silly and irrational to think that today is any different than any other day but it feels different to me, possibly because it's not only 6 months post-Feb but it's also so close to the 'real' anniversary. In just a few days we will have been living with this for a year. I've also been thinking a lot lately about the people who died in February. The focus has been a lot on the zones and the people losing homes and communities and all that sort of thing, and I'm as guilty of that as anyone since those are the things that most immediately concern the people I have been with. But today I looked outside the day to day life I encounter here, and I thought of one of Mr 6's teachers who lost her baby grandson, I thought of a man I used to work with who lost his son, I thought of all my friends who lost friends and acquaintances and I thought of all the people I don't know who have had to pick up and try to build lives in the mess we live with and who also have to struggle with the losses of their loved ones. That day this city, and the world (because many of the victims were from other countries), lost 181 people and in a place this size that's a huge amount. So, today my thoughts and love go out to all those people. Arohanui to all of them; I wish them all as much peace as they can find as time moves on.
It seems weird to focus on today as well, because of course February 22nd wasn't the beginning, but it was an ending - and in a sense it was a beginning; the beginning of the new life where it wasn't over and uncertainty now reigned. On the morning of February 22nd I was happy, I'd sort of got past the stress of the September quake and had started to really enjoy living again. I'd stopped doing the monthly LJ updates on where we were post-quake, but I was planning a special 'it's been 6 months; how are we doing now?' post to celebrate making it that far and getting on the road to recovery. It was a pretty joyful time, actually. People around me were out there, having fun, getting on with life and basically trying really hard to help the city revitalise. I'd been playing with words in my head and was pretty excited about what I was going to write. It was still over a week from the 6 month anniversary but I was pretty positive about my life, about the city and about the future. That 6.3 shake at 12.51 changed all that of course. The sense of security I'd had was wiped away in 24 short seconds. There was no way from then on to say 'well we had the big quake and we're past the worst' because in a very brutal way I was shown that we weren't past the worst and if that one could be worse than September, then the next one could be worse again and so on. I'm not surprised that people left the city - it didn't feel safe anymore. Before then aftershocks had been discomforting, an annoyance and an irritation that I'd learned to live with, but after that they took on a feeling of menace as if each one was saying 'I'm not big, but I could be and the next one could be bigger so stay on your guard' and of course, just to prove that, June 13th hit and again shattered any sense of peace and any feeling that we could just get on with it. February 22nd was the end of complacency, the end of feeling like we'd dodged a bullet, of feeling like Mother nature had been kind to us. We learned then that September, far from being 'the big one,' was actually just a dress rehearsal to make sure we were paying attention.
I was going through Foursquare the other day and found my old checkins and it was spooky to see the one for February 20th. That day
cyphomandra and I were at Java cafe with another friend, sitting upstairs. To get up there you climbed a fairly rickety spiral staircase and the floor was one of those ones that sort of hangs on for dear life from the walls. It didn't extend all the way across the shop and it was quite springy. The friend was a bit twitchy and anxious about it because up there was literally nowhere to hide in the case of a major earthquake and she was convinced the whole place would come down in a big shake. We laughed at her, thinking she was being silly; there was no reason to fear a big quake. To appease her we worked out a plan of what to do, which involved overturning couches and huddling together under them. Now I look at pictures of that area and I shudder. The landscape is so changed that I don't even know which building housed Java anymore, but it doesn't really matter. None of the buildings on that corner look particularly healthy. I don't want to think what it would have been like if that quake had struck that day. I do know that I'll never sit in a place like that again without having some sort of mental plan as to what I'll do, and it won't be to appease someone I think is being over-anxious. It will be to appease myself. I do miss that person I was though, the person who was supremely unconcerned about big quakes because it just wasn't going to happen. Yes I knew we still had a chance of a 6+ aftershock hitting, but I really didn't expect it as the odds were so comparatively low. Now we're sitting on around the same odds again and this time I almost expect that it will happen. It has, after all, happened twice already now.
It's silly and irrational to think that today is any different than any other day but it feels different to me, possibly because it's not only 6 months post-Feb but it's also so close to the 'real' anniversary. In just a few days we will have been living with this for a year. I've also been thinking a lot lately about the people who died in February. The focus has been a lot on the zones and the people losing homes and communities and all that sort of thing, and I'm as guilty of that as anyone since those are the things that most immediately concern the people I have been with. But today I looked outside the day to day life I encounter here, and I thought of one of Mr 6's teachers who lost her baby grandson, I thought of a man I used to work with who lost his son, I thought of all my friends who lost friends and acquaintances and I thought of all the people I don't know who have had to pick up and try to build lives in the mess we live with and who also have to struggle with the losses of their loved ones. That day this city, and the world (because many of the victims were from other countries), lost 181 people and in a place this size that's a huge amount. So, today my thoughts and love go out to all those people. Arohanui to all of them; I wish them all as much peace as they can find as time moves on.