A Sound of Thunder

Almost everything I write is off the cuff.  Maybe 5% of my entries are legitimately thought out before I sit down to the keyboard.  I'm not eloquent.  I'm not elegant.  Most of the time, there's a dictionary sitting next to me because my vocabulary just isn't that big.

Today's not any different, so I'm really, really, really sorry if anyone isn't comfortable with what I might talk about today.

It's the 13-year anniversary of what we call "9/11".  Anniversary is a funny word for that, though.  We usually celebrate anniversaries, and I wouldn't really call any of the tragic, somber, pensive posts I see floating around Facebook and Twitter celebratory.  True, an anniversary is also a commemorative date, but the association still stands, at least for me.

I never quite know how to feel today.  Sad.  Contemplative.  Remorseful, maybe.  What am I commemorating?  I knew no one in the attacks.  I didn't live in any real proximity to any of the cities that suffered.  I was just a tiny girl, sitting quietly in fear up in my ivory tower behind the bulletproof, explosion-proof, reality-proof glass of a TV.

If we are to believe the media, the world around us is falling apart.  Riots break out over innocent men shot, planes crash without a trace, civilians are bombed for decisions they didn't make.

And I feel such a disconnect to it all.  Sheltered.  Ignorant?  Delusional?  And it's maddening.

I am small, lost, and insignificant.  I scream into my hands to muffle my own terror because what does it fix when my head hurts and my heart bleeds?  Nothing.  Who do I help?  No one.

Am I aggrandizing myself by thinking I could possibly make a difference?  Probably.  Yet, we often hear about it being one person or a few people that make that decision that starts the chain reaction that screws everything up.  Butterfly effect, I suppose.  Maybe the problem is I'm too afraid of my own shadow to move a hand to help.  Who knows if I'll just make it worse.  The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

I yell at myself to stop being a coward.  To stand up for something I believe in.  But how?  And I have to answer, I don't know.  And that's the scariest part of all.  I don't know what to do.  I don't know what to say.  What could I possibly say to stop so intent a person from hating, from killing, from destroying?  I have no magic words to undo what has been done, and no strength of my own to change the world.

I am a writer with no words.  What good am I?

And so I can only remember, and maybe hope one day to be brave.

Until the next.