Looking back

eading back through my blog posts today to pick out the earthquake-related ones was more affecting than I expected.  Even though I spending my working days looking at photographs and reading peoples’ memories from the quakes, I’d forgotten just how scary they were.  I think because I wasn’t hugely affected by them in any material way, I’d forgotten just how emotionally affected I was at the time – I’ve kind of fooled myself into thinking they weren’t that bad.  But reading my descriptions of them brought back just how horrible it was during that first year or two when the ground never seemed to stop moving, and everything about life was so difficult.  Makes me really appreciate just how far we’ve come since then, now that aftershocks are rare enough that we actually notice and comment on them when we do get one, and so much of everyday life is back to normal again (on this side of the city, anyway).
What affected me most, weirdly enough, was a comment left by Yetzirah on my 19 February 2011 post.  Written on 22 February, obviously in those few hours between the earthquake happening and me managing to get home and write a post to let everyone know I was ok, it just says “Are you okay????????”, and seeing it again almost brought me to tears, remembering all the love and concern that was poured out for Christchurch from all over the world, and the many friends I have in so many places who reached out to me in those first few days.  If I haven’t said so before, thank you so much for that – it meant hugely more than you can ever know.
Of course, reading back through four years of my blog not only brought back memories of the earthquakes.  There were so many other things I’d written about that I’d forgotten (well, maybe not forgotten as such, but they weren’t in the forefront of my mind any more): cats (I’ve had quite a turnover in the last four years – lost Saffy and then George, acquired Parsnips and Pushkin, then lost Pushkin again), cool craft projects, and of course, some amazing trips.  Don’t tell my boss, but I was distracted from my search for earthquake posts for quite some time while I relived 2011’s great American roadtrip.   It’s certainly been an eventful four years – so many memories packed into it, both happy and sad.  And that’s over a period when I was pretty slack about blogging, so there’s so much more that I know is missing.
That’s the weird thing about blogs (and even hard copy diaries) – how often do you actually go back and read what you wrote years ago?   Maybe I should go back to the very beginning of my blog and read it all – who knows what treasures I’ll discover?  Though I probably shouldn’t read any further back during work time 😉