This is my first post on my new blog. I started writing a blog because I didn’t know how else to deal with my anxiety after the Christchurch earthquakes. Writing about my fears helped me immensely. It was an awful time. I couldn’t sleep at night and I was always on edge, waiting for that next aftershock. And there were so many aftershocks. Writing a blog was a form of therapy for me.
Earthquakes are different to other natural disasters because they don’t stop with the first big shake. There are aftershocks and with each subsequent large aftershock, the chance of more large ones increases. Imagine you are robbed at gunpoint and suffer post-traumatic stress disorder as a result. But then imagine that just when you start to feel “normal” again, you are robbed at gunpoint a second time and then a third and this goes on for hundreds and hundreds of times. The frequency does not desensitise you to the event. I can attest to that. The best treatment is to remove yourself from the trauma altogether and to write about it and/or talk about it. I did all of these things and although I think the earthquakes have changed me forever, I feel pretty “normal” again now. I don’t feel quakerattled anymore. I’m rachelsquirrel now.
Rachelsquirrel does fun things like accidentally setting herself on fire. This morning I was lighting the stove to boil an egg for Elizabeth and I waved the match through the air to put it out only it didn’t go out, it just transferred the flame to my dressing gown. I didn’t notice that my gown was on fire until Daniel pointed it out. Then I completely freaked out, screamed and somehow managed to remove the burning gown – my default response in these situations is to panic and freak out. Fortunately the fire went out and the gown was only slightly singed. Daniel thinks he saved me now.
I can’t believe how quickly the flames spread though. My gown is cotton, so not as flammable as synthetic fibres, but still the whole left front from my chest down to my waist was alight. It was lucky my hair didn’t catch on fire.
Posted in Earthquakes, Funny and tagged blog, earthquakes, fire, ptsd, trauma, writing. Bookmark the permalink.
Do you think it might be worthwhile using a darker font on your very nice new site?
Yep. This is better. It’s a nice font.
Thanks, AV. I appreciate the feedback and you’re not the only one who has mentioned the new theme. So I’m now on the hunt for a new one!
Rachel, don’t you know that: ” people who play with fire get burnned”…………….Sorry,but I could not resist that, and I am pleased that you did not suffer any injury. One of the subjects that I teach is firefighting, to professional seafarers so I am well awre of its dangers, once a fire is started things can go awfully wrong in a very short space of time. Your dressing gown wasn’t Chinese cotton, was it????
I guess I can empathise with you in the terror that you must feel re the Christchurch earthquake, it certainly would still be something that plays on your emotions all the time. I have a problem with going to sea………….I will not go at all now. I happened to be involved in an extremelty tragic collision at sea in 1964 and 82 sailors lost their lives, I spent many hours out in one of the ship’s motor cutters searching for survivors, I am still on medication for that…………..it is just something that you cannot get out of your mind.
I guess teaching marine engineering and sea safety courses is not a great help either, but I do feel I have something to give to the industry. It must do some good, I am 74 and still working full time!!!
I suspect my gown was Chinese cotton. Does that make a difference?
I imagine that with the experience you’ve had, you’re the best person to teach marine and fire safety. There’s nothing like having first-hand experience of these things when communicating the risks.
Yes, I agree. I was just being slow about the Chinese cotton. Or blonde! Whichever you prefer. Anything with the “Made in China” label is automatically given a stamp of poor quality which is a shame because I’m sure it wasn’t always this way. Apparently 30 years ago or so it was anything Made in Japan that was considered poor quality.
When I saw the title, I thought that you had been the victim of unpleasant flame wars/trolling again. Thank goodness this not the case.
Lighting gas stoves terrifies me. I haven’t had the option for years as all electric here, but setting myself on fire is my worst fear about gas.
I prefer having gas to cook with as the heat is instant. But I can understand why some people might dislike it. I’m more worried about gas leaks than anything else. We have a log burner as our main source of heat and I love it. It’s so warm and I love the look of it and the sound of the fire.
Well, it makes me giggle.
Hi Rachel, I am on a relatively low bandwidth connection and browse with scripts disabled. Did you know that your site is unusable with scripts disabled (eg with NoScript)? Only a blank page is displayed. As you are using wordpress.com, I am surprised – how have you managed that? Is the $30 “Custom Design” upgrade doing that? Normal WP blogs are not like that.
Normally I would just say no thanks and go elsewhere, but since it was you I loaded the site in a script-enabled browser in a VM. 10 minutes later after 111 requests and 4.9MB downloaded (according to the Chrome developer tools) it still didn’t show me any more than the header and footer and a repeatedly expanding blob. I notice that you have over 3MB of images, the biggest being 500KB!
I can get to this post using the VM from a link in my newsreader. That is better (several hundred KB) but still rather large for what is basically just text.
Wow! That’s ridiculous! Ok. I’ll look into changing my theme. Thanks for letting me know, Chandra.
So… a friend of mine was going around to schools and ‘demonstrating science’ for all the summer camp kids. When they played with fire, they always had a water hose or something ready and on hand.
One fateful day he did indeed light his hair on fire. Did he remember to stop drop and roll? No. Did his assistant remember to hose him down? No. He got down on his knees and started smashing his head on the ground.
He came back to engineering wearing a bandana.
Really? Are you serious? We just can’t be trusted in fight or flight mode. When I panic I don’t think clearly anymore. Although I’d like to think I wouldn’t smash my head on the ground.
But seriously, we all do something stupid occasionally. I’m sure the stats would bear that out.
I’m with you on spiders! They completely freak me out too. Why do you think I don’t live in Australia anymore?