saitaina | “Holy Shit”

Originally published at Memoirs of a Nobody. You can comment here or there.

I’m sititng here, working on a new t-shirt design, trying to find a report of how long it took between whent he first plane hit the twin towers to when they fell and stairing at old footage of the event. It’s been six monthes now, well, five monthes and a few odd days and I still stair open mouthed at the pictures. I’m feeling more now then I did for weeks after the event. Guess I should have taken up my mum’s offer of getting a counciler but I thought the numbmess was a fine way of dealing. But now, I can just sit here and stair, the memories of the fear I felt in that moment as I watched the second plane hit still flooding me.

The images don’t even look real…they look like a scene out of a moview where you know it’s just some little model they blew up only…it’s not. over six thousand people lost their lives because one man has an anger mangement problem.

Why does America have to be the one that half the world hates? I never did anything, those people, never did anything and yet they died. I was born into this country, I did not choose it. I don’t make policy or deal with forgin dignitaries, I don’t even agree with my goverment most of the time.

I am one of millions, who are American by chance. Does that mean I don’t have a right to live? I’ll admit it once and only once. Yes, I’m scared. Scared that the next attack won’t be a thousand miles removed from me, that the next name I see on the list will be a friend that I talk to, will be the hand I used to hold on the play ground. That the next name may just be my own. I’m scared that the next time I step onto a plane I will stair into the eyes of a madman…and give into death. I’m scared that if/when the time comes, I won’t be the brave one, the one on the phone to her mother, I’ll be the one curled up in a chair sobbing for all the things I should have done diffrently.

I’ve always been the brave one, the cold one. The one that has no feelings, no emotions and will never back down. But right now…I’m just scared. Fire and police officals gave their lives for something they belived in. Passangers on a plane fought for what was right and good. People died, becoming a part of something that they never knew existed, and I honor them by being a scared, chicken-shitted, yellow bellied coward.

My grand fathers were soldiers. They fought in World War II and often told stories of the time. I always saw them as the bravest men I ever knew. My father, wanted so badly to be in the army that he told everyone he was a soldier, even had fake documents to prove it (yes my father’s weird). I could never messure up to the images these guys held in my mind, but what they must think of me now, hiding away, scared to do much of anything any more for fear of what may happen. I watch video’s of soldiers from my comunity as they go off to Afganistan, I listen to reports, as one of our own dies on forgin soil and all I can think is that these were the children they should have had instead of me.

Well now that I’ve said my piece I shall crawl back into my hole, drawing my illusions’s and masks around me, pretending not to feel, not to fear and shall live my life. Normalcy, what little of it we have any more is precious and I can at least give that to my family who still grieves for those lives lost.