trying to process.

Maybe I'll start blogging again.

I've tried journaling.

It's nice, but I have trouble writing for myself. I need to know there's the potential for an audience. Maybe it's the ESFP in me?

Yesterday afternoon I got a text from my best friend from Haiti. It was really choppy. Really unlike her. She's usually so composed. [you kind of have to be if you've grown up in Haiti.]

It said, "A 7.0 earthquake just hit Haiti. My family is all okay, but please be praying for them and those in the very structurally unsafe surroundings."

Ok yeah, fine. Earthquakes happen all the time. Whatever, nbd.

I guess I didn't realize that 7.0 was a sort of ridiculous number.

I guess I didn't realize that the epicenter was only 20 miles from my family's place.

I guess I didn't realize that there would be an estimated 100,000 dead.

I guess I didn't realize that this would be of a similar magnitude, globally speaking, to the World Trade Center incident on September 11, 2001.

except 30 times as many people died.

And now there's nobody to place the blame on.

There's not a scapegoat this time.

How could this happen in a place where there's no hope for them to ever fully recover from such a blow? They don't have a system set up that's capable of cleaning any of this up.

There are no bulldozers.

No morgues.

No hospitals.

The news reporters can't understand it. They say the country is in turmoil, that there are people lying on the side of the road. That's normal in Port-au-Prince. But this devastation is far worse than that.

This country won't recover.

They were down for the count already. They can't just bounce back. They don't have the resources to.

I can't describe in words how painful it is to know there's absolutely nothing I can do to help. My brain is in Port-au-Prince. My body is in Nashville. The disconnect between the two is almost unbearable.

All I know to do is pray.