9/11 Thoughts

September 12, 2026

With everyone else documenting it, I might as well, too. A tiny distraction from the disturbance of my current thoughts.

At 8:46 a.m. on September 11, 2001, I was in a Yahoo chat room role-playing an ongoing storyline from my home office. Someone announced it OOC in the room. I moved my laptop to my living room and turned on the television. People were freaking out online. The fear in the newscasters' voices was audible. My mind slipped into its quiet observation mode.

Moments such as that are a curious thing for me. It seems like so many get extremely emotional. For me, time slows down and my mind starts taking in every subtle nuance so as to respond accordingly. The contrast really hit me that day. I would have been 28, though I don't think of myself as that young when I think about the events.

I understood the importance and the tragedy. I did not understand why people over a thousand miles away with no relatives or friends in the immediate area were behaving as if in hysteria. In many ways, I still don't when it comes to such events.

Exactly one decade earlier, I was signed up to be entering boot camp before the end of the year, and the man I was married to was heading back home on a merchant marine vessel. The look on his face when he got home that day in 2001 is something I am unlikely to ever forget.

I find the way people behave today to be unsettling. Especially considering everything that is currently going on. I've witnessed young adults who had not been born yet completely freaked out, yet would not even raise an eyebrow over the current genocide that's been taking place. Nor do they bat an eye at the atrocities the current administration is committing.

I do feel horrible for everyone who lost a family member or was sickened due to the attack. I also feel horrible in our lack of learning from the horrific incidents. And I cannot help but wonder if those who behave in particular ways on this anniversary realize that supporting that idiot in charge and his plague of lemmings is essentially inviting a repeat.

I do think 9/11 was a horrific, avoidable tragedy. Unfortunately, what this country has become since then is equally, if not more horrible.