Lord, I am wordy this weekend

Partly because I feel I have broken through this dam of a block that has plagued me for years. Finishing a creative endeavor can do that. Also, I am killing time before I go volunteer tonight. I promise to catch up on my blog reading tomorrow, friends, because I've been watching the weather channel all day and can't do it anymore.

Most of you know where I'm from, and while I may not have stated it explicitly, why I moved away. I was one of those lucky bastards who got out because I had the means to leave, a place to go, and no desire to hang around and chance it. And like the rest of America, I watched the terrible damage that weather and governmental incompetance combined can wreak on the soul of a place and its population. I, like you, was horrified by what I saw. But that horror had its own flavor because I was watching my home. And the whole time I stared, crying or in mute deadened pathos, I was still aware that I was lucky. That, even if my own house had been destroyed, I was alive, my family was safe, we were together, and still found reason to laugh at times - that's just how we are.

'That did not happen to me', is what I think whenever someone attempts to wax poetic about my being from New Orleans. I was lucky. I was blessed. And yet. It did. Because of my blasted sense of connection to all humanity, whether through my Zen studies, or my inherent Christian sensibilities, or through my own special empathetic superpowers (Sponge Girl!), it did happen to me and I still feel it every day.

Today I watched cameras pan around in special Disaster!Pornish ways, focusing on blown windows and destroyed highrises and knocked over street signs and I thought, 'That did not happen to me.' And I am grateful.

Here's the secret no one will tell you. Those images you are seeing of damage and destruction? Not the least of it. The true heartache sets in when people go home and see if anything is still standing. When the homeless population doubles due to subsidized housing being demolished and rents tripling. When businesses have to close because their insurance won't cover all the lost property, or because they depend on a tourist trade that just isn't there, or because they can't staff it because so many cannot come home. The true heartbreak will occur when families cannot find their loved ones, or realize they lost someone to the storm.

Trauma is loosely defined as a sudden unexpected event which causes a negative emotional reaction, such as fear. Its effects can be felt for years after said event. The emotional reaction one feels can be triggered at any time, by anything. I know people in the New Orleans area who are still reeling, even if their homes have been rebuilt, and their favorite stores have reopened, and they manage to exist in their protective bubble of everything's all right now. They are still waiting for that trigger. They are changed. We are changed. I am changed.

That did not happen to me. And yet it did.