Still.

[coyotegoth]

There's so very little to say about this day that hasn't been said a thousand times before. Where we were. The chaos afterwards. Lying outside with a lover who had lost her husband, and afterward, seeing her post, I have a reason to smile on cloudless days. Duct tape on the windows. Enough Day. This has just come to feel like a slow, grinding boulder rolling down the hill inexorably pressing us all down again each September. (Did people in the 40s feel this way each December?) Perhaps most of all, I want to lose that reflexive clutching of the gut, the tensing of the spine, as though we were all on a roller coaster, clattering andinching higher and higher, until we fall. Just once, one September, I'd like to not feel- not even think about- this weight (and how much much for those who lost people? I can't imagine). Just once, I'd like this day- cloudless, like so many of the others since then- to be the sort of day where there was nothing wrong that couldn't be disspelled by a friend clapping me on the shoulder, and saying nothing at all more serious than, say, "Fuck it, dude- let's go bowling."

Just once.

Comments

[imaginarycircus.livejournal.com]

Yes. It would be nice not to feel this way, but sometimes grief takes a long damn time to leave your system. Sometimes it never entirely goes away. But that doesn't mean you can't say, "Fuck it. Let's go bowling." at a certain point. We're still alive and we have to keep going. We could put on hair shirts and pour dirt on our heads every September, but I don't know. Around the 10th anniversary of my mother's death (which is also in September, yay?) my therapist advised planning something around the anniversary that I could look forwards to. We take day trips, or do something nice and it's not about forgetting the grief--but learning to live with it, or around it in a way that's not totally debilitating. Maybe we're edging towards that point with September 11th? Of course different people, different grief, YMMV.

[jolefay.livejournal.com]

The thing is I would love to feel that way. I am sure I would feel that way. I would have been a more peaceful person had we not made it a HOLIDAY.... And I certainly would be more of a peaceful person had all of America --still is like "REMEMBER" Why?
When friends have died it's a brief glimpse in my memory and I miss them. I don't paste photos of them once a year and burn candles and talk about where I was and what I was doing. Psychologically this is TORTURE. I want to move on. I don't want to feel tense in my spine and gut. I don't want to look at it. I don't want to remember. I don't want a fountain. I do like that my friend is like "It's amazing I did not wake up on time that day" and.... I want to MOVE on. Yet, here we are every September. With people who have nothing to do with NY or the WTC...getting all "remember" ---did we do this with the Oklahoma city bombing? NO---and a lot of people died with that also. Are we going to shut down movie theatres for a moment of silence before every batman movie? Really what social media is showing me is our inability to move on and grow from things. Oh great I am ranting again.

[stacyinthecity.livejournal.com]

I agree with this.

[fimbrethil.livejournal.com]

There were clouds today. In the early morning when I was driving to work, I thought there were none and suddenly there was a small ribbon of cloud in the sky.

Thank you.

[coyotegoth.livejournal.com]

I'm glad for that :)