my nine-eleven (ten years later)

Ten years ago, on September 11, 2001 I was about to get married.

I was about to get married - on the following Saturday, September 15 - and I was already out of my head. The wedding was imminent. They’d done the requisite dress fittings but, in my preoccupation with all the planning and nervousness and, perhaps, utter panic at the idea of losing my identity, I had become too thin, and they simply couldn’t cinch the organza and lace any tighter.

My mouth was filled with canker sores. I was grinding my teeth. I had night terrors.

The ‘love of my life’, Jeff, was drowning himself in Jack and Cokes pretty much constantly and I don’t remember us speaking much after one day in March that he tossed a 1.5 carat round brilliant diamond in platinum (in a classic, pleasing diamond baguettes setting) on my finger. All I remember is that the wedding itself had become a thing of its own, outside of us. And it breathed. And it demanded all of my attention. Was this not what love what about?

Ten years ago, I followed a path in the dark with someone else holding my hand telling me it was alright. I was twenty-nine years old. It was time to grow up. I said, alright then, I’ll close my eyes and follow you.

It was an ordinary, albeit sun-filled, morning, and I was puttering around in my new condo in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, emptying the dishwasher in my tank top and cotton panties. The phone rang and I let the answering machine get it. My mother said in her expected grace under fire voice, “We’re under attack. The pentagon. The world trade center. We’ve been hit. Perhaps the white house is next. The buildings are on fire.. Jess, call me right away. Do not go to Boston.”

I had no television hooked up. Everything was still in U-Haul boxes from our recent move from Philadelphia. I called my aunt to tell her we couldn’t meet in Boston to get our highlights done. I’d go on with my wedding with roots, damnit. (yes, this was the least of my concerns). When I called her to tell her I wasn’t coming, she turned on the TV. She told me, explicitly and horribly, that people were jumping to their deaths. My imagination was soaring; everything was in slow motion the way things are when nothing makes sense.

I had to see this for myself. I went out to my deck only to see my neighbor, Isabelle, placidly watering her many plants in the sunshine. In her broad straw hat with her green watering can. I threw on some shorts and ran outside. She had no idea. I was the one to tell her. She wasn’t much of a TV person but we went into her house and sat down in front of her impossibly small television set and we watched - and we listened. We watched the first tower come down, we watched it fall in a surreal grey crumbling, an oddly weightless ashy heap.

Later that day, we gathered at my mother’s, me, Jeff, my brother Rich, his girlfriend Quenby, my brother Bob, my mother, my stepdad and several big jugs of pinot grigio, the cheap, easy drinking kind in abundance, and several bricks of cheddar cheese and boxes of crackers. We subsisted on this while we watched the second building come down and we waited for the phone calls.

My cousin happened to be in Jersey City that day, instead of onsite. Check. My uncle, whose 8:30AM meeting on one of the top floors had been rescheduled for 9/12, was a lucky bastard, too. Quenby’s friends got out in time. Down the stairs. My highschool friend, Teddy Maloney, was not so lucky. He died in the first tower.

I announced, abruptly and with no emotion that I wanted to postpone the wedding that it seemed like the right thing to do. Jeff had no opinion. He just drank more beer. Quenby was in my corner on this one, vibing off the emotion of people we knew, the closeness of the tragedy and the weirdness of everything happening around us. My mother said that was a stupid idea and that we had to go on. And then my mother and Quenby argued about it while I stood by, silent and disappearing, into my anxious and already too-thin body, disappearing into that darkness and feeling for the hand that had guided me this far.

I couldn’t find it.

The following weekend, just days later, I got married.

I got married on the green grass by the sea. Surrounded by people I loved. I felt, most of all, the overriding feeling that most people shared that weekend, that it was a glorious excuse for celebration, for distraction from it all, for gathering together in such a confusing time.

I’ll never forget how we all slapped American flags on the back of our cars and drove around the desolate landscape of Maine, where, in fact, the hideous terrorists had come through. Canada first, then there. They had trudged this way, through this unmarred land and sky, they had been right here. Breathing this same air. And I could feel them all around me.

Ten years later, I do not have an American flag on my car nor do I have a ribbon of any color. My marriage, based clearly on something we’d already outgrown once the vows were said, unraveled. Without passion. And without regret.

I will never forget that weekend of unity, of a divided world suddenly bonded together, all of us celebrating life and love, and also deeply mourning, not just the innocent people who died but also the profound loss of something we once shared together, something indefinable. For that brief time, we were so unified, as a people, as a nation, "indivisible, with liberty and justice for all" and it was good. But it was only temporary. Ultimately, it seems, the terrorists took something very specific from us. They inspired us to sever apart and hate each other in a whole new way.

I don’t know what to think of our nation ten years later. I know less now than I thought I did then. Party lines don’t define me. I was in independent my whole life and I’m not a Republican or a Democrat even now. I only want what’s right. What’s fair. What’s just.

My car was recently stolen and the thief got away with it. A level-headed friend of mine took a crazy stalker to court not long ago and couldn't get rid of the problem. Our laws protect the criminal more than the victim. We have to ‘prove’ the hideousness of people in the wrong. But when you lead a decent life in this complicated world we live in, who has time for this nonsense? We can barely keep track of the legitimate concerns we have like our cable bills and insurance. Who has the extra time or inclination to do this? And the sad part is, you then become a victim, not out of weakness, but as the result of a very, very broken system.

I’m not sure how things can change other than blowing the whistle, very loudly and very frequently, on what’s not working. But who is listening? Who has the time to listen? There is so much corruption today, more than ever it seems. From the banks and the (let's not talk about the elephant in the room) mortgage crisis to baby-killer Casey Anthony walking free. What is this place? What is America 'the great' today?

I mourn 9/11 not just for the profound tragedy of that day, the awful loss of life and the absolute loss of innocence for our country. But I, solemnly and truthfully and painfully, mourn what I once thought was a great country. I don’t know so much anymore about us.

I’ve lost a lot of faith in this place in the last ten years. It’s hard to really love it like I used to. Am I alone? Who else feels this disenchanted, disenfranchised sadness?

This feels like a dark time in our history. A very dark time. And I don’t know when we’ll see the light again.

Perhaps not in our lifetime.