I can't watch the news anymore. I don't know if this makes me a terrible person, but to me, it just seems like there are too many terrible things in the world to cope with. In some ways, I have been insanely lucky. I missed both the earthquake in Chile and the one in NZ, but have been put through that horrible agonising wait for information on people twice now. Again, I am lucky that no one close to me was killed, but this time round it has been people I know hurt or trapped, parents killed, and houses destroyed. I am lucky it wasn't worse. But people here don't understand that this was a devastating event in NZ. Then something like the Japan earthquake hits, and I just can't watch. I can't feel for them too, and then I feel guilty and selfish.

Then the phone goes, and it is my Mum. She never rings me, only when something bad happens. So I know something bad has happened, and she informs me a friend has passed away. It just seems like the black clouds never clear, and everyday there is more thunder and rain. I believe that good people, who live with positive energy get the positive energy back, so where is the sunshine? I could really use some.

The world shakes...

It's the message that you don't want to receive, but is necessary. "Massive earthquake here, we are all ok but Chch is devastated".
This was what I got, 10.30pm when I was travelling home on the metro from my last class. The thoughts that were streaming through my head had a nice logical reasoning to them, which I would attribute to my scientific left hemisphere, processing and weighing. This message is from my Mum, so I assume "all" means my direct family. That is good news. But Chch devasted? That doesn't sound so good. However, Mum can be prone to over-exaggeration, so maybe it isn't that bad. But she wouldn't want to scare me too much as I am overseas so it could well be accurate, and so many of my friends live in Chch. Conclusion, get on the internet pronto, but there is not internet at my house at the moment, so get off the metro and find an internet cafe.

6.3 - that doesn't look too bad. We have aftershocks bigger than that here in Chile, so hopefully it was just Mum's exaggeration. The light of the day after, in the office on the internet reveals the horror of the truth. Mum wasn't exaggerating - it is devastation, and death, and the earth really does seem to have moved.

People here don't seem to understand. How can they not understand?? It seems they hear 6.3 and write it off as a storm in another land (as admittedly I did to start), but for me, waiting to hear from the other side of the world about friends trapped in buildings, other peoples' parents, and friends seemingly missing, the pavement seems to be tilted upwards, and I am one of those poor people struggling to push through the dust. The photos become like some torture session that I oblige myself to sit through every morning and every afternoon, and the wait is long.

Two weeks later it seems that all my friends are going to live, but the axis on which they live has been forever altered. And I think everyone waits in dread for the "final list". There only exists about two degrees of separation in Christchurch, and it's close relationship with Ashburton only moves the separation one degree further. It seems like the world shook just a little too close to home.