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#176 - surreal
September 12, 2001 @ 12:36 pm

Surreal.

What a surreal fucking 24+ hours. Despite not crying since the morning, I had a headache all day. I stayed up watching the news until 9pm and then went to bed. When I woke up at 2am, my headache was gone, and I knew that I would be better by morning.

And I was better. I couldn't sleep past 7:30am, so I got up. I had been hoping there would be some turn of events in the investigations or survivors retrievals while I slept, but I was suddenly afraid to turn on the TV. What if something *else* had happened? I don't know what I would have done if it had gotten worse.

But it wasn't worse. There wasn't any real good news, but it wasn't worse. I was finally coming to peace over what had happened, after being in shock for all of yesterday. And they think the nursery, and lots of floors were evacuated before the towers collapsed. Thank God.

But yesterday, I just didn't know how to deal with all of this. I couldn't believe it when someone from work called to check on me. People were at work? What the hell?? Sweetie convinced me to go walk with him to grab lunch. People in Subway were smiling, sitting in happy groups, meeting friends with smiles and good cheer. I wanted to strangle them. How dare they be happy to greet friends. As I lay in bed that night, I pondered what I would do if I came in today and was reprimanded for not calling in. I envisioned myself standing up and saying, "Wait. If you're going to make me feel guilty for what I've done, I'm going to make you feel guilty for what you've done. I find it reprehensible that you were open for business yesterday." As usual, my little confrontation-scenarios ended in me shouting, "I quit!".

The confrontation/reprimand didn't happen. More thanking of God.

I tried to read some random diaries last night, like some buddies said they had done. I couldn't do it. Too many people not feeling in shock like me. One person especially bothered me, bemoaning people's emotions. "Stop crying!" this person demanded of co-workers and others in his/her town. "It's not like it happened to you!" Jesus Fucking H. Christ. Don't you get the point. It could have happened to me! Or my family! Or my friends! And so it didn't? So what? Those are *my* people. I don't know anyone killed, but I'm sure it wouldn't take long playing "Six-Degrees of Kevin Bacon" to discover a friend of a friend who's relative is now dead. How dare you put down my feelings of loss? How dare you not feel the loss yourself? Shame on you.

This morning, I went to tell Gwenllian that I had heard that the Day Care was free of victims - her fearful mention of it was the first I had heard of its existence. I found out she had run into a diary that hurt her even more. That's why I couldn't do it anymore. I can't deal with people who think too differently than me under normal circumstances. I would just fall apart if confronted with them right now.

I want to say something about Palestine, but I'm not sure how. The shit in the Middle East bothers me. Alot. I don't think that Israel is racist, but I don't believe in what they're doing to Palestine. And I don't believe in how Palestinians are responding. I think that it's cruel of Israel to push the Palestinians away. But I don't understand why the hell the Palestinians are blowing up Israelis. I don't understand why Israelis are bulldozing settlements. I don't understand why Palestinians were cheering in the streets to watch 2 buildings with 150,000 possible dead inside. I just don't understand.

I asked my husband why the hell anyone would do such a thing. Hijack planes of civilians to crash into civilian buildings. Everyone's heard of Osama bin Laden. But what the hell does he stand for? Why did he blow a hole in the Cole? Blow up our embassies in Africa? And now THIS? What the hell did we do to him? What did all those people in the World Trade Center do to him?

I just don't get it. I never have. I try to. I tried to keep things straight when the Balkans were being attacked by Milosevic. I tried to figure out what was so important about bombing Iraq. I was too young to know why the hell we were bombing Lybia. I was just scared shitless that America was going to "war" and I was 11 years old. But it's never made sense to me. Ever.

This isn't Pearl Harbor. My father was an infant living in Honolulu when that bombing occurred. Civilians were not targeted, as far as I know. This is worse. This is like Hiroshima. I never understood Hiroshima. So we wanted to end the war. So what? Did that warrant killing hundreds of thousands of CIVILIANS? No.

Targeting civilians is wrong. It's sick. I'm going to go read the news now.

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