September 11th...

As usual, I got an early morning text from my friend, Karl.  I get one every September 11th.  We both lived in DC when it happened.  He worked for a Senator and was sequestered to a safe haven for our political elite.  I called him just before the phone lines went down, I was able to get through to him and make sure he was safe.  I will always remember that when I called him, we didn’t know what was happening and we were being told all kinds of crazy shit.  When I called him, I thought, he thought, we were being invaded...

And we were, just not in a “boots on the ground” kind of way.  We were being invaded from the air, targeted, killed because of political ideology and pure hate...but again, we didn’t know that then.  All we knew is that planes were flying into buildings in New York and a plane landed in the Pentagon.  We didn’t know why, or how, or what or anything.  We just heard one bad report after another, to a truth that was unfolding more tragically than anyone could imagine.

And let’s not forget the plane that landed in the field in Pennsylvania, that one was going to take out our capitol...and Karl.

When I think back on this day every year, I am struck by how much I did not have a receptor in my body to process what was happening.   I remember thinking after the first plane struck the World Trade Center, “my fucking God, how off was the navigation...” And then the next plane hit, and then I just went blank.  I couldn’t process that.  I had no ability to fathom what was going on.  If it wasn’t a rogue and failing navigation system...then what the fuck could it be?  

I didn’t know.  I couldn’t fathom why this would happen...

And I grew up in the Cold War,  so every day in the 1980s I worried about nuclear holocaust.  And still I had no ability to process what was happening on this day.  None.  I had nothing in my experience that would enable me to conjure up the idea that a group of people could hate us so much that they would, plot and scheme and rain hell down upon the innocents.  To take our feeling of safety.  To murder our first responders.  To kill all the innocent people just living their every day lives.  That ordinary people on passenger planes would figure out what was going on and fight the hijackers to their deaths to crash that plane into an empty field, instead of our Nation’s Capitol.  

I had no place in my experience and the living of my life to be able to process what was happening on that day.  That someone could intentionally do something like that, crash a plane into a building, crash several planes into buildings and in so doing forever changing our feeling of safety in this country and in this world....

I was not the same after that.  We were not the same after that.  Nothing would ever be the same for any of us, ever again.

So as I do every year on this day, I wake to the memories, the loss, the sadness, the despair, the hurt and hurting.  I think of all the families who lost their loved ones.  I think of all the first responders whose lives were given attempting to save those in peril, when they didn’t understand that they were also in peril.  That the whole scheme was crafted to create the highest body count possible.  I had lived a sheltered life until that point.  Even the idea every single day of my early life being terrified of nuclear war, didn’t affect me like 9/11 did.  That arrogant feeling of being safe and secure and protected vanished, forever.

So on today’s anniversary of the ultimate sacrifice of so many unwilling and unknowing persons, I mourn the loss, I cry the tears and I remember the world before that fateful morning.  I remember how life used to feel.  How much I could afford to believe that governments know things and will keep us safe.  And today it strikes me that I am now just likely like everyone else on the planet who lives in war torn areas where government intelligence is wrong or lacking.  Where horrific acts are done all the time in the name of patriotism, hate and evil.  Where citizens’ bodies, minds and sense of being is auctioned off one violent act at a time.  

The United States lived, at least for me, a long time with a feeling of safety and security that evaporated on this day, 25 years ago.  And today I relish the fact that I got to live all those years before that day believing that our government could and would keep us safe.  That horrible plots such as this would be foiled and thwarted.  Today, I sit with the knowledge that I now feel like most others in the world that understand there is no real safety in this world.  That we shall always be in peril, and that for every goodness there is in this world, there is also evil, and hate and the need to punish innocents for the “cause”...whatever the cause.

So today as I wrote, I listened to the song Karl sent me, Alan Jackson’s “Where Were You...”  And I cried for all of us.  For all those who died, for all of those lost their loved ones, for all us who lost our feeling of safety, for all of us who had to find a way to process this kind of hate and loss and grief. 

And once more I am reminded that no matter how much hate there is this world, there is more love.  There is more healing, there is more friendship and more hope that one day mankind will realize that we all just get this one chance to live our best lives.  And that no matter what our experience, loving in the face of hate will always be the best use of living.

And so today, just like on that fateful day 25 years ago, I remember Karl.  I remember exactly where I was when the world stopped turning.  I remember the love and friendship we have enjoyed for all these years before 9/11 and all the years after.  And I take a moment to breathe in the grief, longing and pain of all those who died, for all those who grieve, for all those that suffer through this day barely hanging on.  I breathe in and out.  I breathe in the pain and I breathe out healing light, because it is all I know to do in the face of tragedy and loss.

Again, still...