advice on maintaining your sanity

[litch]

I've not been paying as much attention to the katrina aftermath as a lot of people, thank the gods I have a job to keep me busy. But given my newshound tendancies I've been paying enough to feel depressed and overwhelmed.

So my advice to anyone else feeling that way:
take care of the people close to you
try to not think about the shit you can't do anything about
give money to the red cross every time you feel guilty
turn off the news
don't read the katriablogs
exercise
try to give people who are avoiding the story some space

to put that in action:
So I hear a lot of people outraged at dumbfucks shooting at rescue copters and the like, yeah it's outrageous but have some compassion and consider, you just went through a hurricane, thought things were fine and then your house & city flooded, there's no power and no a/c you're scared, haven't eaten, haven't had much water, miserable, for THREE DAYS and then you see a rescue copter taking some other motherfucker and leaving your ass alone. At least if you take a shot at them they will notice you

driving home yesterday I heard this exchange between the secretary of homeland security and the host of All Things Considered. The cold text just utterly fails to capture the dismissive denial in his voice. On some level I can admire the Bushies rejection of objective reality and attempted substitution of their own, there is an an increadible amount of power in insisting up is down, and if you can push the paradigm consistantly and powerfully enough it possible in some cases to make your vision impose itself on reality. But reality don't like it when it happens, and it a whole lot bigger and more determined than any republican political hack.

Comments

[fireangel-999.livejournal.com]

Thank you! That is what I have been trying to say! Also that when you are under unusual amounts of trauma, the human brain and body is not designed to deal with that kind of thing and reality gets a little wonky. These are people living on the very edge of sanity or insanity. It sure is easy for people to judge them when they don't have to go through it.