Posts by Megan Wegan
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Hard News: Three months after, in reply to Russell Brown,
Yes. The idea of mental healthcare on a mass scale seems right to me. I got a strong sense of how pervasive the shock is.
I believe there is "a plan". Certainly it is being talked about.
I know my own counsellor was saying colleagues in Christchurch were asking for people to come down.
having a particular event tip you over the edge into depression is entirely normal. It is extraordinarily hard to get out of that state without help.
Word. And it's made so much harder, because in your head, you think "well, of course I am feeling like this, look what's happened" so it's easy to slip further and further into it. Or, that was my experience, at least.
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Hard News: Three months after, in reply to Emma Hart,
Oh yes. And I think the need to go and look is made stronger by feeling so much that we just don’t know what’s going on.
I have seen and heard more than I really wanted to. Because I feel like an outsider from Christchurch now (which as an issue itself), the telling of earthquake stories wasn't therapeutic sharing, for me. And it was work. Which isn't to say I begrudged hearing the stories at all, but it reinforced the already helpless feeling I had, constantly.
As for the buildings, and seeing the damage...I'd rather not have. The bits of the red zone I saw were heartbreaking.
ETA: Having said that, I am very pleased, as Lucy points out, that I got to see it when I did. Because every time I go down from now, the city will look more and more different.
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Hard News: Three months after, in reply to Russell Brown,
Not at all. It was the Catholic Cathedral that really broke me.
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There was one very small tremor. I felt the wave ripple underneath me and a ceiling beam complained. I looked over at Emma. She nodded.
When I was down there, there was one of the bigger aftershocks, as I was about to finish work on a Saturday night. I was so touched by all the Chch people (including Emma) who messaged to ask if I was OK. I was fine, already thinking I was going to have to work for the rest of the night, and all I could think was “really? You’re asking if I’m ok? I’m here for two weeks, you guys LIVE this.”
I worked in that Holiday Inn you passed, right through university. It is one of the many places that made me cry.
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Southerly: That CERA Rumour, in reply to Emma Hart,
True. I believe you got Amy Pond, too. In fact, I think I ended up with one person, out of the whole world.
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Southerly: That CERA Rumour, in reply to Isabel Hitchings,
Didn't you get him in the massive dividing up of all men ever?
(waits for Emma to come running and say "No! He's MINE.)
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Hard News: Friday Fever, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
Returning to a previous Friday theme -- how many remixes of Adele's 'Rolling in the Deep' can there be? Scientists consulted by this blog say, frankly, we don't know.
The more the merrier, I say.
I found Temple Cloud this morning, who is very Adele-esque, and has apparently been used on a KFC ad.
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It's also worth remembering they're not (to get back slightly on topic) all that much safer. Cousins of mine lived in a subdivision in Brooklands (north of chch). Most of the infrastructure out there is screwed - roads, sewerage, etc - and they lost their house in September. Just down the road from them, on a brand new part of the neighbourhood, was a house that the owners had been living in for a week. It was red-stickered.
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Southerly: That CERA Rumour, in reply to Kumara Republic,
It is Riverstone Terraces I was thinking of.
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Southerly: That CERA Rumour, in reply to Emma Hart,
So, our kids now go to school out next to the Aidanfield subdivision. And it’s fucking Stepfordy.
There's one up near Upper Hutt, but I forget the name. I drove around it one day, and really did feel like I was in Stepford. There's no cars parked on the streets, there's hardly any traffic on the roads. There's no trees, only carefully pruned shrubs.
Aside from the lack of infrastructure (no parks, no bus stops, no local dairy), it felt deserted. This was a Saturday afternoon in the middle of summer, and there were no kids playing, no toys out on the front lawn, no one walking along the footpaths. It was fucking creepy. I felt like people were watching me from behind curtains, and sneering at me for my disheveled hair and that I wasn't driving a Holden station wagon.