I’m sorry, I’ve been trying to avoid this topic, but I’ve got to say a few things. To get them off my chest. So this will be my token September 11th post. I don’t blame you if you don’t want to read it, please skip it if you have any qualms at all. I didn’t want to write anything because I felt that everyone would be, and that everything that I wanted to say would be said elsewhere. I didn’t want it to become even bigger of a ‘thing’. The news will be blaring images of planes going into buildings all day, people will be crying, candles will be lit; I thought, ‘what could I possibly add?’
But this evening I realized, this blog isn’t for anybody else. It’s for me. And I have something to say for me so I can quit repressing it. After I’ve said what I want to say, I’ll try to say something happy, to make up for it.
It doesn’t feel like it’s been a year. But at the same time, it feels like deja vu. I feel as if I’ve been here before, sitting here, a frog in my throat, thinking about what all has happened since then. I’m trying to forget what I saw, not to forget the lives of all those people, but to keep myself from becoming useless. If I cling to the despair, I’ll forget to live. I’ve been regressing it, trying not to think about it, but it all kind of came out yesterday afternoon.
I had been doing so well, I thought. But then my friend Lindsey came online and started asking me questions about the military. I answered them, then asked what it was for. She said she had been visiting a forum where the other users were trying to say that Saddam Hussein didn’t deserve military action, that he wasn’t doing anything wrong. Lindsey, you should know the power you have over me. You were the one who lit the fire in me to start PotterWar.
I started to explain things to her. The Gulf War, my point of view as the child of someone directly involved in the planning of that campaign, how Hussein affects the big picture; why other nations won’t back us, why so many people disagree with military action, what it all means. It brought things out of me that I didn’t even know I knew, feelings I thought I had suppressed in order to get past Wednesday and everything rolled into that anniversary. It made me think.
I was sitting downstairs in the dark silence around 11:30 this evening, waiting for the commercial break to end so I could get back to an episode of “Law & Order.” I was thinking about Wednesday; about what I’ve tried to keep myself from thinking about. That