Remembrance

It took only 14 years for some Americans to forget the horror of 9/11. Now they want everyone else to move on. I choose to remember. I remember the people I used to know who lost their lives that day. I remember the place I used to work which has been erased from our lives. I cannot return to that place yet because I cannot bear to see the hole in the ground or in my heart that it left. This may be over for some of you but it is never going to be over for some of us. I choose to remember because I want to remember the place and the people I knew. I will never forget them. And on 9/11 I will always have a heavy heart. I am an American and I have every right to feel this way because this is personal to me. It is something I lived through. 9-11 is a day of mourning and remembrance in America. If you don't like that maybe you have to get over it.

Let others mourn in peace.

Yes, I had worked at the WTC. For 20 years before 9/11 I had nightmares about this tragedy. I could never understand the images I saw, the falling buildings, the masses of commuters unable to leave the city, and following all that the many American flags that I saw waving in my dreams.

But I knew I was terrified of the twin towers, and I avoided them. By 9/11 I was working in midtown.   I saw what happened through the windows of the skyscraper I worked in. It felt like my dream had escaped from my head and I had lost control of it. It was surreal. We evacuated the building and I walked around New York for most of the day trying to find a way home. Finally I realized that in my dream I took the train home, and I walked back to Penn station.  At 3 PM the trains started running again, and my friend and I and thousands of other commuters packed ourselves aboard a New Jersey transit train and escaped from New York.

No I will never forget that day. Please don't ask me to. I've forgotten too many things in my life, and I never want to forget anything again.   When we try to erase the pain by deleting the bad memories, we also forget everything that was good. We carve away pieces of ourselves.  I choose to remember, because I want to be whole. When we bury a memory, it cannot heal. It festers within us. So every year America opens the wound of 9/11. We take off the bandages and air out our pain. America is trying to heal. It will take longer for some of us than others.