earthquake

My friend woke me up yesterday morning alerting me about 'a' earthquake happening in Italy. In a quarter of a second I realised my bestfriend has been telling me about the mild earthquakes she has been suffering in the city where she lives for university over the last three months. There my living nightmare began. I try to call her straight away. Her phone is off. Panic. I call my dad who gives me his news about being woken up in the middle of the night by the shaking of his furniture, and he tells me my friend is alive. She stayed home the night before, I would say, guided by an angel. Her university home now is destroyed. Only her room is almost intact. Her memories, her 4 and a half years of life, the streets where she used to hang out at night with her friends, the churches art she admired, they are all gone. All day she panicked about her two missing friends. And I panicked to. From 9am to 9.30 pm my crying eyes were on the news, my fingers were typing endlessly to try and link people to the news, to the help, to anything, my ears were on the phone. I managed 3 hours of work, trying to hold my tears and my thoughts in. Nothing.

It was like watching the Tsunami news but this time 100 times worse. This times is places I've lived, people I love, memories I created, my humanity pushed me right in the middle of all of it, leaving me with a sense of powerLESSness and usefulLESSness. My housemate and I spent most of the day trying to find charities to send money to, the trusted links we could sing-post people to, answering calls, sharing jobs, our lives stopped. Italy's life felt like it stopped. Or at least just mine. Whatever happened yesterday, whatever you would think about your future, all was a part of your brain impossible to access. 

This catastrophe has already let humanity blossom out of its own limits. Rescuers looked so small compared to the pile of destroyed walls and pillars and doors, but in their smallness they were endlessly searching for human life to save. And they saved many. One girl after 23 hours who was under her own house, holding her blanket. 23 hours of hell. My friends here in England calling me, texting me, asking me how I was, their care let our humanity grow, their help, their support, their direction in my search to do something useful. Humanity was born in-the-togetherness. But despite individualistic streams, in the midst of a disaster such as this, humanity shows its real self and wins. One mother shielding with her body and saving her own daughter with her life was the climax of it all. It didn't make the earthquake worth it, but it gave all of us a chance to still hope in the future.