Brushed by the fabric of Asia's tsunami grief (From Gazette & Herald)

Brushed by the fabric of Asia's tsunami grief

Gazette & Herald columnist Hannah Gibbons, 17, who was caught up in the Asian tsunami disaster, writes here about the difficulty in rediscovering some kind of normality in her life.

COMING to the computer to write this column with a list of 'things I've been doing' to inspire me into a witty little piece on the merits of swapping fishnets for thick, grey-ribbed tights seems a little ridiculous to me.

Not only have I been doing nothing but feeling the chill of a long January, but if I had, how could I write about it as if it were really important enough to warrant 400 valuable words in this publication (I hope this feeling doesn't last long because my only calling in life seems to be in convincing myself and everyone else that the uninteresting is actually the opposite).

Yes, there have been January parties, and hours of getting ready and being excited and scandal - but all I seemed to want to do is wear my red dress, a little torn from sleeping on it on a Maldivian school floor, and tell everyone that this is a miracle outfit if they complimented it, and impress the boys with tales of a 10-foot wave.

It all seems to come back to the tsunami in the end - every now and then, I'll kid myself that someone else is interested when I remember a particular pink T-shirt that I must have lost, expecting lamentations when all the while this T-shirt means nothing to anyone else... after all, I had so many.

Jumping back into normality after craziness is not just a relief, it can all also bring the frightening realisation that perhaps no one could ever really quite understand the exact experience. People can be concerned - after all, you were on TV and that must be politely commented on - but for most, and I don't criticise, that's it.

We could have died, but we didn't. End of story, bring on the next challenge. As soon as the slap came off and the lights went down, I was just Hannah Gibbons, a passing comment in a conversation about the things people got up to in the holidays, and nothing more. I don't expect to be more, but for me, it sometimes feels as though I could never go back to the way it was before.

Don't worry, readers - I'll return in no time to insights into the mundane, but, at the risk of sounding clichd or self-indulgent, I think I've seen too much to forget.

I didn't see anything; I've no lingering images of mass graves or drowning children and no video recording to play over and over. But in my sheltered life, it's enough to know that I've been brushed with a small part of the fabric of grief that unfolds over Asia - to be intrinsically part of a heartbreaking event, knowing it could have gone one way or another, and being so quickly snatched away from it, as though we were trying to deny our involvement.

This will pass, I know, and wearing a dress will become important because it looks pretty rather than because it seems like a lifeline to a time that I was so caught up in and feel so terribly guilty to abandon.

Updated: 15:29 Wednesday, February 02, 2005