Back in March, when this pandemic was going to magically disappear, the shutdown was going to last two weeks, I hadn't lost my "second mom" to cancer, and I had but two cats in my home (Peach, my princess, and an emergency pandemic foster named Dana), my father suggested I look back at my journal from the last time I lived through a national tragedy.
I started my first journal in February 2001, and have started a new one on or around January 1 of every year since then. Some (middle school) are very long, some (my first year of teaching) barely top 10 entries for the year. I started writing very self-consciously, thinking they might be published someday. I stopped that when I realized Upper Middle Class White Girl in the Suburbs is not a genre you see covered in Dear America very often. Then I wrote a college poetry thesis about them, got all self-conscious again, realized some things are better not committed on paper to be read in 15 years, realized you don't have to read them again, but kept right on writing.
So after my father and I spoke, I found my first diary, started in February 2001, and sent him one entry per day for about a week. This, along with mainlining the audiobook of I Am Legend, helped me channel my anxious energy by remembering/imagining other periods of anxious energy.
Now, six months into pandemic, with every single person in this country and this world affected in one way or another, be it via physical or mental health struggles, unemployment, or ill-advisedly taking on five foster kittens (so also mental health), I find myself also coming up on A 9/11 Anniversary.
Over the years, I have had extremely complicated feelings on 9/11 Anniversaries. The "Never Forget!" slogan rang hollow for me almost immediately. When the Afghanistan War began, my middle school's announcements said "Every Friday wear red, white, and blue until our nation's current conflict is over." Eventually, they dropped that second part. I guess I should still be dressing up weekly. I was against the Iraq War from the very beginning. I was 14 and it was not popular to be against the Iraq War. I couldn't understand how we could fight a War on Terror, when terror was at best and abstract noun. I watched in horror as we demonized "Muslims" and "immigrants," but only the ones that looked a certain way. As I saw it put in a Twitter thread recently, had every adult in my life gone mad?
As the years went on and the death tolls in other countries from other disasters, both natural and man-made, and as the death toll in this country from domestic threats that for some reason never seem to be classified as "terrorism" broke record after record, and as the oppressed in this country cried out over and over and over for some recognition that Their Lives Matter, I began to wonder if it might be good to forget, just a little bit, if only so we could focus on the problems in front of us.
And then, we all got hit over the head by the disaster, the largest pandemic in any of our lifetimes. With 189K dead in the United States (or 63 9/11s) and 881K dead worldwide (or 294 9/11s), we have somehow managed to do the most amazing thing: we've forgotten mid-disaster. When I book a plane ticket (in the times when Americans were still allowed in other countries), I'm still charged a 9/11 tax, but we can't wear a mask. Imagine if someone caused a scene every time we were asked to put our watches in the little plastic bin or take our shoes off for the protection of others? Amazing.
And so. I'm choosing to share these writing this year. I don't know if I'll learn anything. I certainly don't imagine it will change the dialogue in, you know, the whole world. But there's a reason we study history. So here we go.
Note: there are two entries in a row after this one, September 10 and September 11. To avoid this "project" going all year, I scheduled them every two days after that, even though the dates go through New Year's, 2001. Also, I took out everything about crushes and friend drama and stuff y'all don't need to know. I don't even need to know it. :)
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