Thoughts On 11 September 2001

It's morning and I have a slight head cold. It's just bad enough to make me not want to do anything but, not so bad that I want to die. I have to go uptown today to pick up my paycheck, an act of futility because it's all been previously spent. All two weeks of it. This sucks. Rent. Bills. Paying back everyone I owe. The reason why I am so behind is because I lost my shift because of the holiday weekend, the bartending shift that I do on Sundays. This little shift usually gives me the extra cash I need to do the little things so I don't have to borrow money from friends and flatmates. You know, like jitney fare and food and stuff like that. I guess I shouldn't really complain. I put myself in this predicament and I will just have to live with it.
Why did I take this promotion?!?!

The 2,996 Project really affected me. I have avoided the whole anniversary thing for the last few years. It was such a horrendous memory, I didn't want to deal with it. I guess with it being five years, it made a difference. Five years since that day. That memorable day that changed everything about our country. Our lives. I remember sleeping. It had been what I call coma Monday and I was just catching up on my sleep, waking up on Tuesday morning and wondering what I was going to do with my days off. I remember thinking that the weather was spectacular and I was going to enjoy this day off. Then I began to become aware of what was on the television that I had left on from the night before. A plane hit the World Trade Center in Manhattan. Oh. That sucks. I watched for a bit, to see what was going on. Something like that doesn't happen all the time. Good Morning America was covering the incident. Then, the reports started coming in. You could tell there was confusion. A large plane hit the tower, not a small one. That's unusual. Then, I remember thinking, what's going on? I got up and went to the living room, my flatmate, Chunkie is up and watching. I began to discuss the situation with him and then it happened. Whilst watching, a jetliner slammed into the second tower. At that moment, I feared for our country. I knew in an instant that this was no longer an accident. No longer something extraordinary. This was deliberate. This was planned. This was war. War on our soil. War against us. Us! Americans! This was planned to hurt as many people as possible and to make a statement. A statement for all the world to see.

But, that's all I knew. Not the who's, the why's. The rest of the day was one horror after another. The seeming helplessness our country had in dealing with this attack. Our own planes being used as missiles. Genius, actually. Scary, definitely. Then my panic about all those friends who live and work in lower Manhattan. The phone lines jammed. The information coming so haphazardly. The towers falling. One. Then the other. Then another. WTC 1. WTC 2. WTC 7. It was mind boggling. Peter Jennings coming on and, goddammit, making me feel calmer, safer. I will miss that man for his outstanding grace under such unfathomable pressure. But, that day, and the days after, became blurry, disjointed, scary. I finally reached my friends. Jonathan, Andy, the others. They were safe. Scared. Safe. Thank God.

I didn't want to remember feeling the way I did five years ago. I still don't . I wrote that participating in the 2996 Project would be hard for me. It has been. I have cried over my memories of that day. I have felt the fear, hurt, anger that I felt on that day. It is not something I want to feel. It is not the way I should feel. It should not have happened. But, it did. And people died. So many died that day. So many have died since fighting "the war on terror". So, I avoided reading the articles over the years, or watching the retrospectives on the telly. It just didn't seem neccessary for me. Until now. I wrote my tribute. I met someone who died that day and I began to bring up all those memories. The fear. The pain. And now I am adding to that pain something more personal, the loss of someone I never knew. Whom I know. Even as little as I do. My memorial is nothing when compared to the man who died, and I know that. My words do not do him justice. They don't do that day justice.

I guess because there was no justice on that day. And there won't be justice. There never will. Death, needless, useless, wanton and deliberate, is never fair. Is never delt with justice or thought. It's madness and lunacy. It's ugly and pathetic.

It's life. And it sucks.

It shouldn't suck. It really shouldn't.

This is why I have avoided thinking about 11 Sept.