People are fixated on numbers, figures. I think we all have this intense fascination with the hard statistics; how many people died, how tall was the wave, what was the magnitude, how many homes destroyed? We are shocked and awed at the visuals of towns and cities being flattened and no matter how violent or horrific the images, there is always this sense of intrigue perhaps? 

Maybe it's a way for people to reduce something they can't understand, nor particularly want to comprehend into something they can deal with... some sort of defense mechanism which saves them from contemplating the sheer devastation of a disaster. Easier to say some large rounded off, cold number than to think about one person losing their mother, a child, a friend, a lover. Easier to watch houses collapse and towns wash away on a shiny screen than to watch the face of someone who has lost everything. Easier to think how horrible, how heartbreaking and move on. Life goes on, undeniable fact. 

For a week life has been "going on" but only today did that cloying, painful and uncomfortable feeling take over, of being unaffected, of realising that the most horrible thing that happened to you today was only that you had to wake up for a morning lecture. Of realising that you are such an insignificant, unremarkable person who has never been put through any hardships and yet realising that beyond all the televised broadcasts, someone somewhere is trying to deal with the fact that their life has completely changed in one blinking moment. And that there are thousands of someones somewheres. 

The feeling is guilt. Because whilst I feel somewhat emotionally affected I am also incredibly helpless to the point where I flicked through all the news updates, stats, pictures, and  THIS obsessively, not being able to do anything but eat fucking Lindt balls in my pjs, and type a post that doesn't do anything justice! Hoping that some measly donation, no matter how lacking it is will make me feel that little bit better.

Here is to a better tomorrow...