Another Anniversary
Somehow I keep thinking that this will become less important as the years go on, and I guess in some ways it has.
9/11
The day almost everything changed.
My life is so far from where it was then. And I realized today, as I made myself read the stories, made myself remember, that my tears, my pain, the ache in my chest, are all from a different source than they used to be.
Before, I cried for me. For the horror I felt and the loss of security.
Today, today I cry because I can imagine the loss of all of those people. I read the stories and I ache for their loved ones. I guess in a way I'm still crying for me. For how it would feel for me to be in their shoes, loosing so much. I have so much more to loose now.
I wasn't there, in NYC, on 9/11. I didn't go to the City untill years later, but I knew so many people there that were, and that spot, Ground Zero, was a scar, a scab. You didn't think about it, untill you did, and then it was a gut punch, standing there in the enormity of the vaccum left when the towers fell. Hearing the stories of close calls, my co-workers daughter who had left her desk in Tower two to go to the drugstore to pick up pictures from a trip to the zoo, minutes before the planes struck. Friends who were stranded in the city and had to walk miles and hours to get home. Realizing how improbably lucky so many people were that day.
And today, I have to pause while reading, let my emotions settle. I can feel them squeezing at my chest and my throat, my mind whispering "What if it was you? What if it was James? What if it was Joire?"
I think about all the things that have changed since that day, when I was woken up and told "We're under attack, The Twin Towers were hit by something." When I watched, stunned and confused, the conflicting news reporting on the television and internet. Being a country and three hours away from everything. I felt dread in my heart for what was to come, how this would change us all.
The sky is angry today, dark clouds, wind and sometimes pouring rain. It seems appropriate. The storm that broke that day is still raging, still reshaping the landscape and the converstaion. What would today be like without that day? Without the wars and acts that followed? Without removing your shoes to get through security, or the government collecting and categorizing every word we send through digital space?
Were these changes inevitable?