9/11

[ebonlock]

I didn't mean to, I hadn't intended to put myself through all of this again. I still remember that morning 5 years ago like it was yesterday. I can't even watch the trailers and the commercials for the movies based on the day, but somehow I felt...compelled to watch the real footage from the event. The two French brothers who filmed the events, one from within tower one, and one outside.

I started crying with the footage of the first plane. It was just as horrible, it never stops being horrible, even now. But it was the second plane that hit me like a punch. I lost it, I just lost it. The worst though, dear gods, the worst was the sound of the bodies impacting the ground as people leapt out of the towers.

"Tony man, it was raining bodies."

Jesus...

Fucking gods how anyone could justify this kind of death and destruction...

Seeing what happened inside the tower when it collapsed, and then on the street when the second collapsed was rough, but I was so, so glad that the film continued afterwards and showed the FDNY company returning alive one by one. At least there was that. The rest was the aftermath. I remember so vividly hoping against hope they'd find people in the rubble, hoping it wasn't going to be as bad as it was. Hoping.

The generosity of the people who contributed to the effort, the dedication of the firefighters going back day after day. Gods, the footage from below the building, the stores and subways. The descriptions of the bodies they did find...

To this day I can't look at a skyline of New York without wincing. When I watch a movie with the twin towers shown in it it actually physically hurts. I know Aelf always gives me confused looks when I react like that, until she realizes...

Do you know what just kills me, though? That right before this aired they were covering the fact that so many of these guys, these heroes, and I don't use that word lightly, that so many have been abandoned since that day. Their health has been damaged by the debris and the air and how the hell does our government treat them? As if they were at fault that the EPA declared the air safe.

So, anyway, I'm a bawling wreck and Kage gives me the look that says, "What's wrong with you, mom?" but Pye jumps up on my chest and actually licks away some of my tears. He honestly did just that. I don't know what I'd do without him sometimes.

Comments

[elenderel.livejournal.com]

I ... I can't watch the footage. Well, I can watch it all I like through my tears and heavy heart. And the rueful knowledge of what the world has become since that bright, sunny morning five years ago. I can't bear to see pictures of the former skyline - it's a ghost from another time, another New York, another America; it's a punch in the gut for me. After all this time I still have a hard time watching the tapes, watching first one then the other tower collapse into dust upon themselves ... I'm sorry, I'll stop now. I had written more but ... well, I feel like there ought to be a funeral for the America we once knew, is all. Because everything changed on this day five years ago.

There's a remembrance ceremony going on tonight not far from here ... if I'm not a miserable beast when the novocaine wears off I think I'll attend it.

[ebonlock.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure I'd say that everything changed, but it did bring home to a generation just how naive we'd been about our security and just how hated we really are.

I'd hoped that in the weeks and months after that we'd choose a sane, rational and focused approach to dealing with the aftermath. Sadly, that wasn't to be. Instead of reacting like so many other countries to terrorist attacks, we lashed out stupidly and violently, letting our baser natures prevail.