Ten years later

Live Journal post from September 19, 2001


My friend Pamela called and we talked for over an hour. I was telling her what one of my LJ friends, (Scott) said to me regarding my seeing birds flying away from the towers. He said I'm realizing that now: that we've been preparing for this all the time anyway. Deep inside of us, there is more than enough strength to overcome the terror. Being able to focus on the birds flying out of the WTC means you already had practice overcoming it. It means that deep inside of you, you had figured out what needs to be done, and when the time came, however much in shock your system was, there was something else operating as well. It's that "something else" we all need to find within ourselves. remember that you're not the only one, and remember that you have within you the power to move on.

I'd been walking around feeling that I had lost my capacity for empathy. That, until Pamela & I began talking about the attack I shed very few tears regarding how badly I felt about the horrible atrocities we continue to commit against each other. And then I wept, I sobbed. After more than one week of semi numbness I have felt the pain to my being. What we do to each other ... what we have done.

The question: Where were you when it happened? I was reading Scott's live journal entry and when reading his words about a plane hitting the tower I thought he was writing one of his amazing stories, I didn't think that the high-jacking was real. Then it hit me, Scott wouldn't post anything like that. I decided to turn on the television and immediately I saw a jet slicing through the second tower. I recall the feeling of having left my body but what was vivid for me last Tuesday (9/11/01) was my seeing the birds flying away from the towers. All the other images were muted and foggy. My disconnecting wasn't new, I've done this a few times in my life when what I experienced was too horrible for me to remain...I had to leave in order to survive... I had to fly away with the birds.

There are a few so-called experts who call this sort of disconnect as schizoid but I've always returned when I felt it was safe enough to feel that which I wasn't able to feel. It's that the reality of what we do to each other, to ourselves, really- It's something I'm not able to bear in one 'helping'. So yes my mind has had practice, knows how to take anguish -- one spoonful at a time. I never want to come to a place where I'd ever accept how vicious and cruel human beings are and if I ever stop feeling disappointed with the way people treat each other I'll know then that I've become a part of the monster.

-Carol