Stormy Weather

The weather is the same as it was a year ago. Grey, rainy, muggy. Intermittent hazy sunshine.
Last night it was hot and my dreams were furious, violent, technicoloured: I woke covered in sweat. On Monday I took the tube again, sat in the first carriage, looked at everyone getting on and getting off. I wondered whether anyone else was nervous.

It was a lunchtime tube; not crowded. I don't think I can get onto a rush hour tube at the moment. I have been managing with varying degrees of success most of the year, but at the moment I am just too tired and it is too damn hard and I can't.

I can't wait for this week to be over; at the moment everything reminds me of what I want to forget.

I still think talking to the media about an inquiry is the right thing to do, because I still think that an inquiry will do a lot of good. It will help to restore trust in the security services and police, help to heal the rifts, help us to understand. If that means I have to deal with feeling exposed and exhausted at the moment then that is the price to be paid. I have had a lot of emails and support from others directly involved telling me that they are behind me, that someone needs to stick their head above the paraphet, that I am not alone. I hate the fact that to ask for an inquiry you have to always start with ''where were you, what happened, when the bomb went off in your train?''. But that is how it works. I hate the fact that maybe some people think I am doing this to'' raise my profile'' ( do me a favour, my career is not helped by this, not at all) and ''wave my wounds''. The distrust of the media is very strong in some people. There is gnawing uncertainty, anxiety, am I doing the right thing? Are we doing the right thing? For the right reasons? I have examined my conscience, I have asked myself hard questions. I think, I still think, yes, this is the right thing to do. How else are we going to get anywhere other than by talking to people and raising the issue so that people can understand, think, make up their minds? This is such an important thing. And the media is a powerful communication tool, it is the only way I can think of to do it. And there are other survivors speaking out, others at my side, many others saying, keep going.

I say no far more than I say yes. I do not think that there is any good to be had by shouting angrily at the media and accusing them of 'profiting from pain'. Some of them may be thoughtless and sensationalist, but this is an emormous and important story and it is normal for it to be covered because it affects all of us. The whole country.

I am not the only survivor talking to the media, and I completely understand why others do not want to have anything to do with it. It is frightening to feel so naked. I am quite a private person. I suppose this is where my desire to withdraw and protect myself meets my desire to do the right thing head-on, complicated by my survivor guilt. I couldn't help people on the day, but I can try and campaign for what is right, for what I think will bring hope and help and healing. There is blowback, there are spiteful attacks from ignorant people, but there is also kindness and encouragement from friends and strangers.

Not every minute of my life is taken up with it; this blog and the campaign are where I put it all. I am also trying to rest and look after myself. But when the weather is the same, the news is all 7/7, it is hard to get away and find a space where I am not Rachel North, Bomb Survivor, just Rachel. The person I was before all this madness started, when I could see without smoke and tears in my eyes, when I could watch the news without seeing my face and the faces of people I know, and care about; the person who got on a train a year ago on a wet summer morning, with a light heart and nothing to fear and everything to look forward to. It feels like a lot longer than a year. I wish I could turn back the clock, that I had never got on the train, that the bombers had changed their minds and decided not to go through with it. I wish.

Too late. I'm here now, so I will keep putting one foot in front of the other. Because I am alive, when I could be dead, I can speak, when I could be silent forever, I am not alone, and this too will pass.