Have you ever?

Have you ever missed someone so much you just want to cry; someone that you just saw yesterday, and the day before. But someone you haven’t spoken to properly for such a long time. And somehow you’re just not quite sure how to make them understand.

Have you ever had so much going on in your life and needed just one person to talk to. Just one, but it has to be the right one. It’s not their fault they’re not there. Sometimes life just conspires against us.

Have you ever felt so upset but not really known why? It seems silly. Selfish. Needy. Frivolous even. All those things you swore you’d never be but you just can’t work out what’s going on in your own head, much less in your heart.

Have you ever felt lost in your own life? In need of something but just not quite sure what. You can’t put a finger on it. You can’t explain it. You need some kind of reassurance, you don’t know what for, but you know you need it.

Have you ever felt like even though you’re lost, you want to lose yourself in something. Anything.

Have you ever had the feeling it's not actually you i'm talking about?

Yesterday....

....all my troubles seemed so far away....because i saw....

The Biggest.

Helibopper.

Ever.

His name is Elvis. And he's my neighbour.

Scale

There is a big difference between seeing pictures of things and seeing them in real life, whatever the circumstances and no matter how amazing the photos.

Last year at the end of a trip around Australia with some friends I went to Ayers Rock. It is a stunningly beautiful area. How can one rock be so much? Before we got there, I actually had very little interest in visiting it. "It's just a stupid rock," I thought. I only agreed to go there because we were drivig home within just a few hours of it, and it seemed a waste not to. It's not as if I was ever going to make a special trip there just to see it... "It's one of those things every Australian should see," I'd been told. So I went.

I don't even know how to describe the feeling that came over me as I saw it in the distance, and remained with me as we approached. I couldn't understand how something I had seen in so many photos right throughout my life could at once be so the same and yet so very different. How could it be so familiar and yet so brand new? Surely, you would think i would have learned by now, that as brilliant as modern photography is, one thing it cannot and will never be able to accurately portray is scale.

Anybody who has ever looked at real estate photos probably has a good grasp of this. Anybody who has tried to insist to friends that their holiday photos "just don't do it justice." Anybody who has driven down the Hume or Melba Highways in the last couple of weeks will also begin to have an understanding- anybody who has seen the loss and devastation on the faces of those who have lost everything, and the stress and worry of those who still feared they might.

Many people have said to me recently, "I've read the newspaper and found myself crying," or "oh isn't the news just so sad at the moment - those poor people." The generosity of Australians and the world has been amazing, obviously many people are aware that this disaster is beyond the realms of anything most Australians have ever endured. However, I think the only people who can even begin to understand the real scale of this catastrophe are those whose lives have been irreparably changed: those who have lost friends or relatives, those who have lost their homes and memories. Those people now have to begin the mammoth task of trying rebuild their lives. and that's something I am certain they don't want people taking photographs of. They don't want strangers thinking they understand something the scale of which they cannot possibly understand and something to which no photograph can ever do justice.

Disappearing

Blogland is like a massive block of apartments. When you've lived there for a while you get to know your neighbours. If you don't see them for a while, you miss them. After a while longer though, you get used to it and then one day you find yourself wondering whether they still live in your block of apartments at all. But you can't find out, because you don't remember their names.

So you trawl back to the blogs you vaguely remember the names of, looking for links that sounds familiar only to find that the same thing happened to those people as happened to you - life got in the way. They haven't moved out of their apartment, they just haven't painted the walls in a while and there are cobwebs all over the place. Some people gave notice they were giving up and getting out. For others, I suspect that a day turned into a week which turned into a month which all of a sudden became a year. Kinda just like what happened to me.

All of these people inspired me in various creative ways... I felt like I had a good long glimpse into the inner workings of their souls. Reading someone's writing can have that effect sometimes. I am sad that they are gone now. I can only hope that one day, as I have, they feel the urge return, and that they let me know when they do.

Sadness

It's funny how things change you know...

I have just been reading bck through some posts I wrote eons ago. Yes, it has been eons since i've regularly written anything at all, much less a blog post. It's kind of sad really. Reading them though, I've decided that I used to feel a whole lot more cheerful than I do currently. Crazy random musings... that's what those posts were. I enjoyed reading them and I decided to write some more.

I think i've grown up alot though, in the last couple of years. I feel wiser - sadder. I love my life, I really do, but things have happened, things have changed, not least the events of the last 10 days. It feels as though it's been months since my world was smoke-free and consisted of normal hours, normal people and a normal town. I feel selfish, and really I am, and don't worry, I realise it. I have so few things to worry about and so much to be happy aboutand thankful for, but I still wish everything would just go back to normal.

I wish the sky was sunny and blue and smoke-free.
I wish i could drive down the roads I used to drive down without driving past tens of kilometers of blackened trees and buildings in rubble and ash, past acres of charcoal fields and
I wish our town wasn't full of people in mourning - both mourning for their lost lives and lost loved ones.
I wish I could see my beautiful boyfriend every night instead of spending them by myself worrying that he's out on the fireline.
I wish I could drive my normal way home, but the road's closed.
I wish our town wasn't full of fire fighters and emergency services.

Mostly, I wish that the events that caused all of these wishes to come about had never happened.

If only life were exactly how we wished it.

I know there will be happy times again. I know life will return to "normal."

Right now though, it doesn't feel like it will be any time soon, and that makes me sad for us all.