Do One Thing Everyday That Scares You, Right?
Here's to you, Eleanor Roosevelt.
Three months ago, I arrive,
Fresh and wide-eyed.
A girl who has never been drunk, never travelled by herself, never truly sunk into a culture other than her own.
On the first night, I sit in an unfamiliar apartment playing games with a drink in my hand,
trying to find my balance in this new land,
and then the room starts to shake.
And while I am panicked and frantic, I notice that for the people around me,
This scene is ordinary.
Cause this is a city that is used shakes.
Used to jolts. Used to trembles.
Used to feeling unsettled.
This is a city that is used to disappointment.
To redirected life plans.
To lost neighborhoods.
To lost businesses
To lost
people.
When the temporary quaking subsides, the girl next to me,
A kiwi, a born and raised resident of the Canterbury area, a girl who has stayed here through the shake-based hysteria.
She says to me: “why did you choose to come here of all places? The city is dead. There’s nothing to do”.
Instinctively, I think “Well that’s great,”
Because after flying halfway across the world to reach what I’ve been hoping is heaven,
It’s unsettling that I neglected to think about February 22nd, 2011.
I’m naively disappointed to find that this city isn’t perfect.
that after almost 2 years you can still see the effects of the way
the ground betrayed this place.
And as embarrassing as it this is to admit
I don’t want to be told I’m living a place that is trying to breakeven with the earth.
A place that is still trying to prove its worth.
And, because at this point I haven’t yet learned how to care for this city that is open and raw,
I begin to question my placement.
Begin to wonder if I will be able to enjoy my time in this place that is vacant.
I wonder if I would have been better off in Auckland, or Wellington or Dunedin:
Cities that haven’t been weakened.
Two months later,
and now I’m standing in the dirt
with a hammer in my hand,
uncertain of how I’m supposed to serve.
I’ve found myself in the midst of a service project,
Wearing an orange vest,
And feeling as though somehow I haven’t passed this test,
Of “How to Care for Christchurch”
Because now, as much as a I want to “help”
I’m not sure this city needs me.
Emily, an average height, average weight, middle class, white girl from the States who
Doesn’t know how you’re supposed to “relieve disaster”
I’m afraid my help will be met with
“what do you know about what happened here?”
“you weren’t here on the day”
“your house didn’t crumble”
“your friends didn’t take off”
“your life doesn’t look a lot like mine”
And to that I have
Nothing.
Because I don’t like to impose.
I don’t like to disrupt,
I like to do what I’m told.
I’m not under any delusion that my community service is
doing anything more than skimming the surface of
the work that needs to be done.
And I’m not sure I have the skills
To rebuild or the
Resources needed-
Or the energy to fulfill-
And it’s exhausting just to think about.
But it isn’t long before I
Recognize that
I’m not the only one who gets tired at this thought.
I feel the fatigue in the souls of the people here and know that
They are tired.
Of things being broken, of stores being closed, of businesses being unavailable.
They are tired of the frequent aftershocks that rattle their core like a Vet’s flashbacks to the war,
They are tired.
And when that tiredness seeps into your bones, it can make a person resentful.
I find myself meeting people who don’t want this city as their own.
People that have grown up here and yet they find themselves pretending they always intended to live here on loan.
Because the home they know isn’t a “Red Zone”.
This city isn’t an easy place to be.
It’s got residual silt and debris.
It’s got a Central Business District that is encased in an impenetratable fence.
And the sense of hopelessness here doesn’t lie far beneath the surface.
It’s got businesses that have closed down with no sign of opening back up.
10,000 houses whose doors have been permanently shut.
And its missing 182 people who will never see what
Happens here next.
Right now this city feels like its far from it’s best.
This city isn’t an easy place to be.
But if you listen closely, you can hear a rhythm.
Deep underneath the soil,
next to the tectonic plates that made this earth
Quake, there is a beat.
And though it is faint,
The pulse is steady,
Slowly growing in pace and sound.
Like it’s making peace with the ground,
Saying, “I know you didn’t mean it.
Ya know, we all shake sometimes,
We’re all lined with faults
That make it difficult to stay still,
Make it hard to be strong”.
But this city is strong.
Ya know, when I was a girl my mom used to tell me that at age four,
I was the most persistent being she’d ever met.
Well my mom needs to meet Christchurch.
Cause this city’s got a spirit that will not quit.
Will not accept no for an answer.
No, “No” isn’t a word that works here.
This is a place where things happen,
where within days of the earthquake,
the people were on their feet,
ready to meet this challenge
with money they hadn’t saved,
with shovels they didn’t have,
with plans that hadn’t been made.
Nah, this city’s got a heartbeat.
And I can lie my cheek up against the chest of this city no matter where I am
And feel that beat pound.
Pound in the reSTART mall
Pound in the new city blueprints
Pound in the empty lots whose gaps have been filled with books that change lives and mats that yell, “dance!” and
It pulses in the university arts department
Where posters fight budget cuts with big bold print that begs,
“IT’S NOT JUST THE ARTS PROGRAM, IT’S THE UNIVERSITY”
And this beat throbs in the bodies of the thousands of students who,
Decided not to party,
But instead formed an
army
to clean up silt,
and volunteer their time,
put themselves on line.
This heartbeat drums at the TEDx conference in 2012,
Where Ian Taylor stands on the stage and says, “If this city is to grow, we must give our trust to others”
And suddenly I understand
that my purpose here might not be to be the next
Sam Johnson, the next
Tom Hooper, the next
Coralie Winn.
All I can be is
Emily McDowell.
Average height, average weight, middle class, white girl from the States who doesn’t know a thing about earthquakes.
But I do know pain.
Do know the way loss makes you want to lie on the floor just to feel something solid.
I know how soreness works its way into your core and makes you hurt in ways you didn’t know could before.
I know how sometimes crying doesn’t help just makes you hurt more.
And I know how a backrub is often better than money,
Better than casseroles and flowers and “oh honey, I’m so sorry”.
I know how it feels to just want life to go back to normal.
Before everything was prefixed and suffixed with the words “damaged” and “closed” “before”
But I also know,
that you gotta try to love the things that have hurt you,
Gotta flirt with change,
Gotta be okay with the pain.
Gotta know how to say “I need help”
So instead of saying, “this city is dead”
I think we have to look ahead,
Look to what we want Christchurch to be.
In 10, 20, years I don’t want this city to be free of its history.
Cause this city didn’t fall from grace,
It’s merely trying to find its place
in this world.
And this world,
could learn a lesson from here.
Learn how to make something from nothing,
Like malls out of storage containers,
And families out of acquaintances,
And love outta hurt.
So I’m gonna try to love Christchurch.
Gonna hold its hand when it needs it.
Gonna encourage people to come here,
Gonna invest in it with my time, and hope and I’m
Gonna defend it to a “T”
Gonna stop giving it my pity and start giving it my energy
Gonna stop looking at it like a place that needs my help
But rather a place that can help me.
Cause I’m starting to find a home in this place whose initials are
N. Z.
Or N. Zed. Cause that’s how they pronounce it here
And I’ll go along with it if that’s how it’s said.
Three months after the moment I arrived and I’m glad,
Glad that I ended up here
Glad that I am near something new and vibrant,
A place that is a lot like me,
uncertain and anxious
but ready to grow.
Ready to learn what I don’t know and
Challenge what I thought I knew.
So Christchurch, thank you.
Because I know I’m supposed to be serving you,
But I’m pretty sure you’re serving me,
Or maybe we’re just serving each other.
And maybe that’s the way it’s supposed to be.
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