The Reason for the Season

I'll never forget September 11th, 2001. I was living in the Washington D.C. metro area at the time, so it was the beginning of a very emotionally turbulent period for me. It is almost impossible to this day to put into words the fear, anger, resentment, shock, horror, etc. that filled my apartment. Almost as if a cruel irony, my bed was underneath a picture of the twin towers while at the same time I watched them fall on my television. I kept glancing from the TV to the wall, hoping that this was some sick dream...then came the phone calls. From all over, people were ringing my place frantically with varying degrees of success, trying to make sure everyone was alive, while we were simultaneously making calls to our loved ones to determine their status. Even the memory is surreal six years after the fact...


I knew then that life would never be the same again. Just how much it would change, I had no clue. While I, nor anyone close to me, actually lost any family members, I found it impossible to shake the dread that enveloped my entire being. Survivor's guilt, they say...more like a global empathy that marinated the core of my soul in grief and loss. I was actually angry at people from home who were acting like something had actually happened where they were, possessive of the feelings caused by the tragedy. My constantly shifting mental state around this time had two profound effects:

1. I could not go to work without crying the entire ride. I would try to hide it, suppress it, but to no avail.
   
2. This feeling of depression and despair would ultimately be one of the two driving forces in my leaving the area (combined with the sense that I had unfinished business back home).

I no longer wanted to party. I no longer wanted to feel. I was depressed in the classical sense. All the feelings of loss that I had worked so hard to repress, specifically related to the untimely death of my best friend made me long to start over in life. I checked out of DC the moment the towers came down.


When I moved, I put up a mural on my wall of pictures I clipped from the various newspapers the next day. One picture in particular, the one of the man free falling to freedom from the suffocating air and flames, is still burned into my mind. How I longed to be free...


Since them I am doing much better, but every year I would be remiss if I did not give pause to remember the dead. A hearty thanks as well goes to those who made that worst of days bearable. I sincerely hope we never experience such a thing again.


Much love to the survivors...from The Year of the Pig.