CARLTON FLETCHER: Storms leave feelings of inadequacy, guilt

My cruelty has punctured me and now I’m running dry.

— Neil Young

I’ve talked with a number of people as I’ve tried — as so many others have — to sort out my feelings in the wake of all this destruction that’s devastated our community.

I feel tired … drained … exhausted. I feel shellshocked, having watched people’s lives literally blown apart in an instant. I feel an overwhelming sadness for the loss of life. I feel powerless, unable as I’ve been to effect any change in the series of events that have unfolded in our community. I feel inadequate as I sit here doing this job I’ve chosen while so many good people try to put our community back in order.

And I know it sounds crazy and it’s irrational, but I also feel a little guilty.

I feel that there’s something wrong with the order of things in that, except for what are minor issues compared to many of my colleagues, friends and people I admire, I had little damage from the two devastating storms that forever changed the face, the psyche and the soul of our community.

Assistant City Manager Stephen Collier and I had this conversation at the University of Georgia Terry College of Business Economic Outlook event Tuesday at downtown Albany’s Hilton Garden Inn. I think Stephen put it better than I could.

“You go into work in the morning, and you see all this destruction, the lives that have been so changed by these storms,” Collier said. “You deal with it, you do all you can, then you go home to your little place and everything’s just like it’s always been.

“I know that that’s part of it — that no one gets to choose where a natural disaster like this is going to hit — but you feel a little guilt that your life is pretty much normal when so many people’s lives have been turned upside down.”

Still, I sit in this office, from early morning to late at night, trying to work with my colleagues to tell our community’s story. I care about this job very much, but I care more about the people in our community. And I believe there’s a very fine line between telling your community’s story and intruding on others’ tragedy. I pray we don’t cross that line, but I hope that people will understand that if we do, that was not our intent.

As I sit here, I think about my amazing friends B.J. Fletcher and Makeba Wright, out organizing groups to gather and prepare food — on their own dime — for displaced citizens. Of Dougherty County Commission Chairman Chris Cohilas out, walking devastated neighborhoods and advocating for the community while his own properties remain in shambles. Of my colleague Brad McEwen and his wife, whose home was severely damaged, leaving their own worries behind to help neighbors and people they don’t even know.

And I think about how my one lame attempt to try and do something to help someone, a promise to pitch in while colleague Jon Gosa repaired his destroyed fence, came on a Saturday and Sunday that was spent instead preparing for the eventuality that something might happen at my residence that did to hundreds of others in the community.

I used to think I was an OK person. I’m left now feeling selfish, holding to a degree of detachment that this job requires of those who try to do it well.

Most of all, though, I’m feeling at a loss. On Monday morning, after we’d sat through hours and hours of relentless rain and wind storms over the weekend, trying to evaluate when or if we should leave our home, I left just after daybreak to come to work. My 14-year-old daughter walked to the door to see me off, and when she saw the cloudy, overcast sky, she said, “There’s not going to be more tornadoes today, are there?”

I offered her assurances that there weren’t. But I drove to work feeling the inadequacy of a man who’d somehow, through the horror of these weather events, let everyone he knows down.

Email Carlton Fletcher at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter at #ABH_Fletcher.