I have to live because I didn't die

One year has gone by from the earthquake, and Indonesia and Gili Air have been on my mind many times in recent weeks. Those thoughts startle me a little. They took me into a placed of little darker thoughts, a place that is kind of unfamiliar to me nowadays. It's a place, where I haven't been for a while. The first thing that hit me was the fact that I could have died. Realization of this struck my mind with immense power a few weeks ago. Why didn't I die? Why did I survive? It has some significance why I survived, with many dying.

When the earthquake started, I was in a shop. I realized immediately, what was happening, as the building began to shake. It was no small gentle quake like the one that woke me up a week earlier in the early hours of Sunday morning. When I was standing on the road outside the shop, it was like being on a surfboard. With the difference that underneath me wasn't the board, nor the water, but hard tarmac. The hardness I could feel a moment later under my knees when the last force of the quake threw me to the ground. Fortunately, I had time to send a message to Finland that I was okay. Fortunately for my loved ones.

Last sunset on Gili Air

When you live in the middle of a catastrophe, you don't all the time think about, what is going on in the rest of the world. How life appears, when you are waiting for the news, whatever it may be. How do your loved ones feel when they can't contact you? A year after the earthquake, I'm suddenly waiting to hear news from the other side of the world. News from my friend and his family. Background to this is the events in Kashmir. And the story behind these events is very long and political, so I will not go into it in more detail. Now, I haven't been able to contact him for more than two days. My friend, his family, and all of Kashmir have been isolated from the rest of the world by blacking them out. When the setup changes, from the catastrophe, where I was myself a year ago, to the safety of my home, I'm in a situation where I am forced to go through those feelings of the people standing on the other side, waiting for news. And, I have to say, there on the side of catastrophe, it's easier to live and breathe.

Here, on the other side of the world, thoughts are crisscrossing as follows: What if that talk on Sunday was the last one that we ever had? What if this message was the last message from him? What if he's dead? Where and how would I even find out about it? On this side of the world, I color this story to be more horrible than it hopefully really is.

Srinagar, Kashmir

So, now I use all my strength, trying to put myself in my friend's shoes, or actually, trying to think what he would say right now. What would he say if he saw me now browsing the news with concern? Me, the person, who doesn't even follow the news? He would say, relax, in really bad Finnish, in a way that only I can understand what he is saying.😉Everything is going to be fine. He would say: I'm not dying, and I'm not going anywhere, relax and continue with whatever you were doing. You worry way too much.

Everything happens for a reason. Did I stay and lay on the ground on that dark Indonesian night after the earthquake ended? No, I continued my journey. That's something that I have to do now also, a year later. It's just more challenging than you would think, but my friend would like me to do so. And, whatever happens; I have to live because I didn't die.

Dal Lake, Srinagar, Kashmir