I remember the fear. Cold, gripping terror in the pit of my stomach. Holding my baby in my arms as I watched in pure astonishment, as two airplanes crashed into buildings on American soil.
I know it's been said too often, but it really was surreal. We all knew, that day, that life as we knew it would never be the same.
I've never felt the way we've been told we should feel about that day. I've never felt a need to go to Ground Zero, and I just can't understand people's need to treat this site as hallowed ground.
Before you jump down my throat, let me explain...
My sister was killed in a car accident in 1990. You can't possibly know how I felt when it happened. You can say you do, because you lost a sister in a car crash too...but you don't know...you couldn't possibly know for the simple reason that you didn't know her.
You didn't know anything about our lives, our childhood, how we loved each other or how we disliked each other...so you couldn't possibly know how I felt.
It's the very reason I have never understood this need for relatives of 9-11 victims to make us feel as though there's something wrong with us if we don't feel as they do and view Ground Zero as a shrine to their loss.
It's just earth.
We all suffer loss in our lives. I have no right to make the spot where my sister died hallowed ground because that's where her life ended, mainly because she died in the front yard of a very nice family. It would be like me telling them they can never build a shed or a playhouse on that spot because it was where my sister lost her life one day in 1990.
I never want to feel what I felt on September 11th, 2001, but reality tells me I just might have to go through it again.
I truly hope I'm wrong, but over the last few days I've had that same feeling of doom in the pit of my stomach that tells me something really bad is about to happen. I can usually write it off as irrational fear and overcome it, but this time I've been unable to do that.
As I said before...i really really hope I'm wrong.
I won't be spending the day remembering the victims of 9-11.
I didn't know them.
I wish you peace.
Sinth