Coping...

Today has been particularly hard.

I awoke at 3am, for no particular reason, maybe I'm smoking too much, maybe drinking too much, maybe too much caffeine...either way it doesn't matter, I was awake. At 4am, it was too much, I got out of bed and went to the kitchen, made lunches for my wife and daughters, and read, and read, and read. Anything to take my mind off whatever was keeping me awake.

then after dropping my two girls off to school, I headed to my 'new' workplace, for some sort of 'get-together' I didn't hold much hope for it being my kind of thing, and tried to take my mind off it on the way by blasting (and I mean blasting!) heavy rock and metal as I find this music a good way to release. Anyway, turning up at the new site was an experience, one I don't care to do again. If there is one thing I cannot stand, is people who think they know what you are going through. However, in saying that, listening to the 'bad' and 'good' things from that day was emotional, my preference was to say nothing...but I could not get out of there quick enough, especially when the company started waxing lyrical.

So, into my work, one of the two things I do well to get my mind off things. However on the way back I found myself at the exact spot where the car kicked out when the earthquake hit last week...I turned around and parked on the same spot, waiting the half hour until the Nation remembered for two minutes the time it hit; 12:51pm. The radio played the full National Anthem, the first time as a NZ Citizen I can remember singing it out loud. And I cried, or at times, tried to cry. Isn't it hard when you can feel them coming on and yet they don't? You feel so guilty and insensitive, and yet know that if the water works started, you probably couldn't stop them? Katie TXT me halfway through, telling me how much she loved me and remembering the shit she went through trying to get hold of me at this time. And I cried more, and I cried for those who can't anymore, and for those who are going to cry a lot more when they know the 'official' fate of their loved ones. Cars sped past, and I cried in anger that they didn't bother to stop to acknowledge the moment. And then, I stopped - it seemed like I had cried for ages, but it was barely the two minutes..started the car and drove to Katie. And we hugged in the street and cried some more...

Then sometime soon after it hit me why I wasn't coping; I cannot handle the calls for assistance, the unending TXT, emails and calls to see if I was OK. I am a person who helps others, finds solutions, fixes their problems, provides the shoulders. To have it the other way round does not sit well with me, I am the provider, not the requirer (if that is a word). Not that I am ungrateful, please don't read it that way, but I have gone through life standing on my own two feet, and being there for others - I have never needed, or admitted that I have needed, help from others unless I have asked for it.

Which will ultimately bring me to the issue I have with those who have pissed me off - those I have always been there for, but have not shown me that it works the other way, or/and if and when they did, it seemed way too little, way too late. And when I feel compelled to write this down, it will upset some, but at this point in time, I don't really care, because I feel betrayed and abused by their apparent lack of compassion...compassion I was not lacking in for others during this difficult time, compassion I might have actually appreciated, welcomed, even embraced. How I hate those with theoretical life skills................and now the toll is 155...fuck, that is the roll call of my daughter's school, and I find that hard to comprehend.