3 years and 2 days

I didn't post anything on Saturday. I usually link to Sars for her brilliant essay Thou Art With Us because it was, and still is, the most powerful thing I have read about that day. She still hasn't found Don yet and doubts she ever will. But the story is still as moving.

For the last year or so, however, the mere mention of that day has only caused me anger and frustration, trumping any sadness I might have felt. I get so tired of people bringing it out as an excuse for any fuck up by our government. Every time the truth finally seems to be getting out, another terror alert, another allusion to that horrible day. It's be warped and twisted in to a partisan battle cry, instead of a personal day of sorrow.

This makes me sad. I wish I could have grieved with everyone else on Saturday. But I couldn't help but be defiant. They will not manipulate me with their lies and their slight of hand. I will feel nothing, or they win. They've tried to hijack the flag, the National Anthem, patriotism and that September morning, and I am not going to let them. The best way I can honor the people who gave their lives that day is to remember what really happened and make sure that the people who exploit it for their own gain lose the ability to do so on November 2nd.

Kos quoted a NYT piece that really got to me and probably explained how I feel better than the ramble above.

The signals were mixed. What the politicians wanted, it finally seemed, was the right to revive 9/11 on command, whenever it served their own ambitious purposes. If they could, they'd implant a 9/11 chip deep in the limbic region of my brain and activate it by remote control.

Getting over the attacks is my way of refusing them access. Sure, I feel guilty about it, but so be it. Some emotions, some memories, some pictures are just too combustible to walk around with, especially when certain people are waiting to toss a match into my soul. That's why I've begun to bury that awful morning in a spot that only I can locate, under layers and layers of pop ephemera. I'll dig up those images if and when I choose to, but not before then. The passage of time has made them truly mine -- mine to bring out and mine to set aside.

Thankfully, Sars reminds us all what's important. We are Still Here.