Getting out of bed is enough.

/ Lisa / 1 Comment

Nothing spectacular happened today.

I sat at the breakfast bar for the majority of the day doing work. Mostly calling small businesses in Christchurch to see how they fared after the earthquake.
It was actually quite difficult to hear a few of the stories.
One woman I talked to has basically lost her entire business, she doesn’t even know if she will be able to re-open in another location. It’s just lost.
But what got me, was she said she was still lucky – she had her family and that’s all that mattered.
Then it got me thinking, and I probably should have thought this before, but why does it take an event like this to make you realise the most precious things in your life are sitting right next to you?
People are so blaise on a daily basis. Getting all up-in-arms about petty inconsequential things. Sure, they make life easier and more fun, but as long as you’ve got your family, you should be happy right? You should be thankful?
Most people are and I’m sure people in Christchurch are definitely thinking this.
But for me, I still don’t know what makes me happy. I’ve been so unhappy for years and seeing a situation like Christchurch, I just don’t know how to react sometimes.
It’s like if I was to let the full reality of what has happened in Christchurch in, like really let it in, it would decimate me. I would be in bed for weeks and refuse all food.
So to survive, I don’t care. In order to be me, I can’t care. I go on about my daily life like nothing has happened, like more than 150 people haven’t died in a city that I love.
It might sound harsh and like I actually don’t care, but I do have times where I let it all in and I just can’t function in a daily capacity.
For me, it’s self preservation.
And to me, happiness is being able to get out of bed in the morning.

Life begins again with two phone calls.

/ Lisa

Nothing terribly exciting today, so it will be short and sharp. Most likely. I may end up ranting a bit, as I tend to do.

Had a rather good night’s sleep, so I am feeling much better now. Tummy bug seems to be going or uber-stress is fading.

The day began with two phone calls. The first was from a friend who has managed to hook me up with some work to do with the Christchurch Earthquake. Just a bit of compiling information, we’ll say it, for NZHerald.

w00t.

Second call was from the Manawatu Standard. I guess I forgot to mention I had an interview with them last week. Needless to say, it did not go well under the circumstances. I did not get the reporting job there. I am not surprised though. I could barely string a coherent sentence together.

I did decide to go through with the interview though. It had been set up pre-bad news and I did contemplate cancelling, but I thought Granddad would not want me to do that. As he was always asking me, “How’s the job hunt going?” He was always keen to know what I was up to next and to hear about what I was writing.

I am un-phased by this news. I guess I’m not yet back in the right frame of mind to fully get back in to things. Taking is slow, I’ll get there.

Sorry for the disruption, your regular programming will resume again shortly.

/ Lisa / 1 Comment

It’s amazing how a single event can disrupt your life so thoroughly.

I was having a pretty perfect week – hanging with Man Piece in Wellington. I had caught up with friends, Greg and Dave, who I hadn’t seen in ages, and had lunch at a quaint little bakery somewhere on Featherston St.

I went to Te Papa and walked through the European Masters Exhibition and had my own private tour of Parliament with @jacksonjwood.

I hung out with fantastic people and had some casual drinks. It was a good week. A perfect week. Something that I have not had in a long time.

Then it all came crashing down.

My Mother called at around 7pm on my last Saturday in Wellington. The 19th. My Grandfather was dead.

I’d always imagined a call like this. How I would react, how it would feel, but in the end it was all in my head and I didn’t actually have to deal with the reality.

This time I did.

I’ve had my ups and downs in the last week. The funeral has passed, but I don’t think the reality has really sunk in yet. I don’t know when it will. Whether it will be a slow realisation or whether the reality will continue to hit in waves, just like the pain.

There is just no way of knowing.

And if dealing with this loss wasn’t enough, the Christchurch Quake hit far too close to home as well.

Once again, the adrenalin kicked in to know whether family and friends were safe. Some friends I still haven’t heard from, but then again, I don’t even know if they are still in Christchurch to begin with and I can’t seem to find out.

But seeing a city that I love destroyed, breaks my heart. Especially a city that my Grandfather (and family) have a strong connection to. Part of me is glad that Granddad did not see last Tuesday’s devastation.

It has been a very hard week. There have been moments when I didn’t know how to carry on. I just felt like giving up.

But for me, the way I heal and deal with situations is by writing, so I am once again here, to try and continue with my goal of a blog a day. They have not been regular at all, but I hope to change that again. I need this. It is very much an outlet for me.

So this is a quick update on what has been going on. As of tomorrow, I hope to resume my blog a day.

We’ll see how it goes…

VD and not the disease or the TV programme.

/ Lisa / 1 Comment

February 14 2011 – my first real Valentine’s Day. *vomits from that whole cutesy grossness*

And I really mean, I finally had someone to celebrate with. Not one of those awkward ones where you do something for the guy you like and they just end up laughing at you (yeah, true story).

MOVING RIGHT ALONG.

Man piece wouldn’t tell me where we were going or what we were doing, which concerned me a little. There were rumours floating around twitter that he was taking me to a Data Centre.

Sure, that’s HIS idea of a hot date. Frankly, it’s not mine and would have resulted in a swift kick to nether regions.

Lucky for him, it wasn’t a Data Centre. He took me to the Observatory up the tram.

KEEPER.

But I’m more going to use this post as a sort of reflection of the last few years, because for me, there has been quite a turn around of events.

This is the time where I should put in a warning that if you’re sensitive about anything or tend to burst in to tears for no particular reason you should probably stop reading or not read this when someone else is in the room. Oh and possibly have tissues ready or something like that.

Three years ago, I had a fairly epic break down. It just happened to be on the 14th. Nothing particularly to do with that day, just happened like that.

I had been diagnosed with depression about six months earlier and hadn’t really done anything about it. I’d just kept going on as per usual. But this particular day, I was stressed to the max because summer school was finishing and I was trying to organise the next semester and working too.

It was a fight with one of my best friends (and flatmates at the time) that was the catalyst to my break-down. Absolutely nothing to do with her, it was just wrong place, wrong time. I love her to bits.

Anyway, I ended up trashing my room. Literally trashing it. Throwing things around it, breaking things, completely stripped the sheets of my bed and pushed the mattress off it and ripping up uni notes. I don’t even know why I did it. I just knew I had to do something and that was what I did. It was also the first time I cut myself. I just felt I needed to feel something, anything and that helped.

It was @LittleIchiban that ended up helping me through that night. She sat there with me, just letting me cry (with my arm bleeding, superficial, but still) and finally I knew I couldn’t put my friends through what I had been putting them through. That night was when I finally decided to try and turn my life around.

It’s now been three years. Three very long years, but I can finally say I’m me. I’m happy. I’m “normal” (whatever normal is).

I still had my ups and downs and it wasn’t really until the last year that I started to make progress. But these things take time and I took mine and I’m better off for it.

And because I did, I know have an awesome Man Piece to enjoy, not only Valentine’s Day, but every day with. #OMGCHEESE *vomits*

Soz for being all absent and shit.

/ Lisa
I know I have been absent this past week. Have done zero posts, even though the premise behind this blog is a blog a day in my mundane life.
Well, I haven’t been feeling that flash in the last week. I’ve been quite emo and I really didn’t want to write anything. Particularly something that I may regret writing and having published on the internet at a later date.
I’ve been experiencing a lot of internal conflict in my mind of wanting to do my own thing, but then being there for Mother, who is still having a rough time after eye surgeries. It’s a fine difficult line to walk and it’s been taking it’s toll on me.
Basically I just needed some time away from the blog and sharing all my events/thoughts of the day.
Nothing much has happened in the last week anyway, so you haven’t been missing out on much.
Except, I did start writing for Oh, The Scandal! So I’m getting some more online writing experience that can be added to my CV, albeit unpaid. Surprisingly I’m okay with that.
So this week, I hope to resume my blog a day. I know it is Tuesday, but I will start again later this afternoon/evening with a post about yesterday and then carry on with one about today.
Here we go again…