Right Now

I have a friend who e-mails me and wants to know what is happening right now...each time Christchurch rocks and rolls again, and again. Usually, I fill up a page with all types of avoidance to what I am really feeling...which is hard to describe, there is almost no precedent for it.

Traumatized and invigorated, I switch between the two...traumatized as to each singular event, then riding some kind of energetic wave that seems to be excess energy going through me, reminding me, I am one of the fortunate ones...I still stand and so do my closest loved ones, as well as my home.

But, the suffering hangs in the air, and the experience is not unlike being caught in the act of childbirth, stuck in the transition stage, and the newborn refuses to come all the way out. This is the stage when women become blatant and often say things others would rather forget, it is like being ripped in two and the only thing one wants, is relief and a separation from what's going on inside them. This best describes how I feel right now.

After last Monday's 6.3 when my husband and I were in the car going up Papanui to his office in Merivale,I had the opportunity to see the horizon become an oceanic wave, trees swinging wildly recommending I leave, water rushing out of the ground, cars being tossed about and in that moment I finally decided, this is enough. It is time to distance ourselves from the ongoing pains of giving birth to a new Christchurch.

It has been almost nine months now, and we are coming to terms with how long we as individuals can endure the ongoing contractions amidst pregnant pauses full of morbid anticipation. Unlike some folks here, we do have some choices.

Like most, we are tired, psychologically traumatized, bewildered, short tempered, forgetful, disorganized in day to day matters but highly organized in our earthquake relief packs, incapable of going to certain places, unwilling to go to others, sleep deprived, over indulgent to our bad habits, capable of predicting the rhector scale, depth and direction of each event, but...

keenly aware that we are a people having undergone unprecedented events that have given us sensitivities when nourished, may bring more compassion into this world when we collectively get out of the ring of fire we are currently sweating in...

right now, I need some distance, and...that will be my focus for the next few weeks until I can achieve my goal to move my family further afield...not to forget Christchurch, but to help from enough distance to provide a safe place for my family and friends to come see me sensibly, notwithstanding that the whole world feels dangerous thanks to instant real time technology...

this is NOT the end of the world...

but, the world doing what it always has done, giving birth to new topography...hopefully, without my family in it.

Right now, I believe in leaving.