While, yes, of course logically I know that it's in no way my fault that we did not feel the wrath of Hurricane Charley and that there is nothing I could do to have spared those who did feel it, emotionally, I still feel the pain of it. Up until no more then a handful of hours before it struck, the world knew it was hitting us. Directly and without mercy. We had stood and waited and watched knowing it was coming for us. We expected it because that's what seemed meant to happen. The last minute turn; the destruction of those areas unready, unprepared and unexpected hurts me. It hurts me that they suffered so that we here did not. Does this make sense? I know it is illogical and I know that it is a thing in which I did not have say, and yet still, I can't help but feel that they sacrificed and even died so that we here would be saved.
Sometimes I think that despite of - or perhaps because of - all that I've been through, that above all else, I am meant to endure. I am meant to survive no matter how hard and how painful it becomes. So, that part of me sees the destruction that was wrought and now I know how hard it would have been in this place - even in an area which was no scheduled to evacuate - to survive it. How terrible our apartment building is and how easily reduced it could be. And so I wonder with that tiny little part of me, if this was not a price paid for my continued existence. So it feels in some way a guilt and a debt.
I know it's nonsense. I do. And I know it sounds pure ego. But it weighs on me. I see these images and I cry for them. I feel for all they have lost and all they will never get back. How damaged they are both in home and spirit. I wish I could make it better for them and I wish I could have saved them from it; that no one need have suffered from this fury.
I don't know. I know how relieved I am that it missed us but how that relief comes with the nagging voice of guilt that someone else was not missed.
A rainy weekend. No storms on Friday, and yet Saturday and Sunday it rained on-and-off all day. Heavy downpours at times; thunder, lightning. It's been a slow and quite weekend here. Made obvious all the more by the constant news reports of the disaster to our neighboring counties. Loss of water, power, property, food, shelter, home, life. And I sit watching tv and the Opening Ceremony, snacking on a cake I made and dozing off for a bit in the afternoon. Such a juxtaposition of fates.
~ flowers bloom near Memory and Dream
at 8/16/2004 12:41:09 AM ~
~
