Triggers

September 11th, 2001 will most likely always stick out in my memory as I was 21 years old and fully capable of understanding the gravity of the situation. All day I have been rather quiet, not sure of exactly what was on my mind but knowing my heart was heavy. So many lives were lost that day. Our world seemed to implode upon itself and there was no rhyme or reason for the chaos and destruction of that day.

All day I refused to listen to the normal radio stations, the way the general public terms it as "nine eleven" has always bothered me to no end. The way our society seems to just shorten the date to such a simple phrase bothers me, not sure why, but it always has. It's September 11th, and always will be to me. A silly thing to let bother me, but it does and so I listened to K-Love the Christian radio station most of the day.

I pondered and thought, saw very little proof that the day had actually ever happened to be quite honest. I saw one vehicle with "Never Forget" written on it's windows with flags flying off it's windows. Another 4x4 truck had put 3 huge tires in the back of his truck to stabilize a HUGE flag that flew from the bed of his truck. And that was it. Oh how we take for granted our peaceful little community, in our little nestled up town apart from the rest of the world.

And yet, I still couldn't get my brain out of one single memory that it had been stuck on since I'd woken up, proving to myself  that really I'm not much better than the rest of the world who is self involved and turns things within themselves. September 11th will always be a trigger for me, one I've yet to figure out how to work through or past. I don't know if it is because it was the first traumatic event of my adult life and I shared it with my ex, who I had been dating for 8 months. Or if it is the fact that he was the one who was there and whose arms i ran into, scared and terrified and uncertain of life.

Regardless I can remember wrapping up into his arms at night, sleeping in his bed, listening to the planes flying from the local airport and terrified at any moment another one would crash and this time it would be local, would hurt family or friends or all hell would break lose and everyone was about to die. I remember the call from earlier in the day, my ex was the one who gave me the news of what was going on as we had no cable and I wasn't listening to the radio. Moments through out that day are tied into my ex, and today each and every one of them came up. And so I spent the day doing things much as normal, but insisted on doing things to nurture myself and try to push him out of that memory.

And then tonight as I sat down, waiting for him to return our kids from visitation, I anxiously awaited and prayed he wouldn't use today to do anything stupid. I remembered how he had lied to SOOO many people and said ever since "9-11" he had wanted to do something to give back and to fight back (he'd never ever vocalized any such thing and only joined the army at my suggestion after I said i wanted to do it and he had been laid off from his six figure job) and my stomach turned. Here i was AGAIN internalizing something that has absolutely nothing to do with me.

SCREW my memories. SCREW my triggers. FORGET the past of a day that really, I was blessed and so darn lucky to walk away with out having lost a single soul. Do the parents, siblings, spouses or children of those lost on September 11th have the benefit of mourning a marriage that ended badly? No, they lost their loved ones. Forever. Without even a goodbye. Some days I am ashamed at my selfishness, today is one of them. Next year I intend on using the day to teach my children about true self sacrifice. Every year on September 11th, me and my children will find one victim from that day and we will learn about them. Their families, their lives, their passions, what happened to them, how they died and what they wanted this world to be for those they left behind. And then we will do something to honor them. In fact, i think this weekend we will do it late and spend some time on it.

There are so many awful things in this world, I hope to work harder at focusing on the positive and finding what each moment has to teach me.