My reaction is abnormal. While most all of us mourn, I feel so little. That day has a different feel for me than for most people. For me it was more the major news story than a tragedy. I told myself I had lived through history. Later, I walk the streets of my multicultural Brooklyn neighborhood and marvel at all the flags and bumper stickers. "United We Stand" one reads. "Wow we are really becoming more patriotic," I think to myself. True, I am inspired by stories of firemen working impossible shifts, sometimes losing their lives. It's true that, at times, fanatics can make my blood pressure rise. However, sadly, I feel next to nothing for all those who suffered and all those who lost their lives. I would do anything to have a normal, human reaction of genuine sadness. But where is all my pain?
I am abnormal. I only feel a little disappointment over all the suffering. No sadness over the sheer destruction. No tears shed when hearing the death toll. My reaction is minimal. Where is all my pain?
The media constantly reminds me that my reaction to September 11th, 2001 is cold and numb. I stroll into the CVS Pharmacy near my supported housing apartment. I pick up a magazine a few feet from where my pharmacist is standing. I see a picture. It is of a young woman crying. I lament about how, in contrast, my reaction is emotionless: Why can't I cry like the woman in the magazine? What I would do to cry! As I'm waiting for my medication I turn the pages of this commemorative. I begin to read "We all feel..." I stop and turn away as these words serve to taunt me and remind me how, unlike most everyone else, I am basically indifferent and without passion toward this "major news story," as I call it. Unlike all those who feel, I am squandering away my days feeling virtually nothing toward all the victims of this apocalyptic event. I have a newspaper clipping on my wall showing human beings-emotional, normal human beings-from Seoul to Washington to Las Vegas-somber, crying, and aching. I would be the odd man out in any of these pictures. I might have a spaced-out look on my face, devoid of emotion. I don't feel nearly enough-not even close.
Yes there are reasons for my indifference. First, I often refuse to focus on how good my life is right now (vocations, friends, at times the ability to relax) and I often focus on how bad my life is now (anger, fears, bad impulses). Therefore there is more than enough agony, anguish, sadness, and pain inside me and very little room for feeling for the agony of the victims of September 11th. Second, the whole September 11th tragedy is too intense. If I would feel all that I have the potential to feel for those who suffered and all those who continue to suffer, it would totally overwhelm me. Because of these two reasons-the lack of room inside me to feel and the overwhelming nature of the whole event-I feel nothing. So for now I coexist with my Spock-like reaction.
Still, what a feeling it would be to be standing at a magazine rack in CVS, glancing at, say, a Time or US News and World Report article about 9-11 and, for fear of being embarrassed in public, barely hold back tears. What an experience it would have been to not use "being in shock" as an excuse for a lack of reaction to death and sorrow. How wonderful in a sense-yes, wonderful-it would be to have a reaction of genuine, spontaneous, and strong grief.
I yearn to lose a little sleep for their pain. Sadly, on the night of September 11th I slept just fine. Knowing that I am truly compassionate would produce a satisfying feeling. If you who are reading this had a more typical reaction of pain to the day, then, quite frankly, it is you who are fortunate. I am jealous of you. If you cry for the innocent, I salute you. If you are amongst those that despair, I applaud you. For me and those like me, who feel next to nothing, all I really want our reaction to be is healthy and normal. I crave to get in touch with myself and my humanity if I really have any. I crave to be normal. I crave to feel for the victims of September 11th, 2001.
It's September 11th of 2002. I stay up and watch TV. I saturate myself with coverage of memorials of last year's tragedy, hoping, even praying a little, that I'll feel something for the victims of September 11th, 2001. I see pictures of two towering infernos and feel nothing. I hear about thousands dying. I see the cavern that is now Ground Zero and again nothing.
On the night of September 11th, 2002, Barbara Walters appears with kids and wives whose fathers and husbands were fire fighters who lost their lives last year. Hearing not a list of countless names of victims, which is too overwhelming to think about, but the stories of a mere handful of individuals finally bring me to feel something. Thinking about individual tragedies puts suffering in its proper perspective: one innocent young teenage girl who is now forced to grow up without her father; one wife of a fire-fighter who dreads their upcoming anniversary; another woman who is forced to deal with the horrid fact that one day it will be time to remove her wedding ring; a third, who, with tempered emotion, states that the word 'closure' should be banished from the dictionary. That same teenage girl clearly states to a national audience, "People tell me 'I know how you feel.' They don't know how I feel!" That wakes me up. My dad died in his sleep at the age of eighty three; hers died in his prime when she was just a girl. I begin to focus on the good in my life. My life is easier than hers. She is suffering intensely. I am not. My poor memory is a big problem for me. I fortunately don't have to deal with the fact that terrorists were the cause of my having to grow up without a father.
Thankfully, my depression is mostly gone. When talking on the phone, sometimes I actually feel good. For the young girl, there will be no closure. I, however, am more fortunate than all these victims. For my problems of the past there is closure. Perhaps in the late '80s, in the worst zombie-like days of the aftermath of my schizophrenia, my life was just as bad as theirs is now. Today, it is not. For me, all that is ancient history. They have it worse. I have it better. In my mind I wished her well. I wished a better life for all those kids being interviewed.
The next morning as the sun begins to shine on Ocean Parkway in my multicultural neighborhood, my heart beats faster. There are no tears, but I feel some despair over the victims' excruciating life situations. I feel sadness for them. True, it is uncomfortable, but it is good to feel for others. I am not abnormal. Thankfully, I have some humanity in me. I feel like I am a normal person. True, I don't feel for macrocosmic suffering, but I do feel for individuals. It is very good to feel normal.