So, Here We Are Again

The whole 9/11 thing is feeling weird. Reminds me of when five years had passed since my mother's death. Has it really been so long? Boy, was that all it was? Five years?

Grief gets weird when you live with it for a long time and then -- poof -- it just vanishes, like. Guilt can come on, then. "I should be more depressed. Shouldn't I?"

I'm watching some of the retrospective stuff. I think it's important to remember it all, but I just don't want to face any marathons. I forget sometimes, though, how fucked up it must have been to live in NY in those early days.

I've been thinking about that day. The weather today was very similar to the weather then -- clear, sunny, warm, with just a hint of fall on the light wind. I remember the silence that morning. I never found out until I got to work -- I never saw the news or anything that morning. I was enjoying coffee, sitting barefoot in my deck captain's chairs, curling my toes around the metal railing.

I remember walking into the office, my closed captioning office, and the radio was turned on for the first time (and last time) ever. All the employees had no headphones on and were numbly editing files that probably needed no more editing. I knew something huge had happened.

"What?" I asked.

"Someone's flown planes into the two World Trade Centre towers. Thousands of people are dead. They think it was terrorists. And someone hit the Pentagon, too."

And like that I knew life on the continent had changed. No longer were we untouchable. Quite the opposite.

I didn't think I could lose any more innocence after that day, but I was evidently wrong. I grow more jaded and disenfranchised with every passing year.

For a time, 9/11 made us all better people. We found the commonality. We had community. We had a cause. And something happened. A chasm. Conflict. Chaos.

Strange how quick that tide turned. Sad, too. Sigh.