9/11

The day has almost passed and I barely even had the time to think back 5 years ago. In a way, I didn't want to so I avoided turning on the radio or looking at news websites all day.
It's funny - I remember feeling so alone back then when I saw everything happen on TV. I wanted to be with people who could feel my deep pain and understand why and what I felt. 5 years later I AM where those people exist and yet I didn't want to relive that day again. I still can't think about it without welling up and choking.
In my entire life I have never felt as alone as I did that day. I remember standing in the living room of the house I shared with 3 other girls in Watford and trying hard to keep my tears back while those idiot girls started arguing about politics and whose fault this was. I wanted to kill them. I wanted to grab their necks and strangle them until they understood that none of the crap they were uttering mattered. That there were people dying in front of their eyes and they didn't even care. Again... the intense feelings I had were never something anyone outside the US could understand. I wouldn't have hurt this much if it had happened somewhere else, no matter how ridiculous it sounds even to my ears. In my mind and heart, to this day, that attack was a personal one. An attack on me. And in the midst of this I was all alone, having just moved to the UK with nobody to call my friend. I remember desperately needing someone to just hold me and tell me it woud be ok. The closest I came to that was when I went to put some flowers down at the American Embassy in London two days later. I sat on a brick wall in front of the statue there, tears streaming down my face, looking at the mountain of flowers, people kneeling down to pray, two girls starting to sing "America, the beautiful". A minute later this guy sat down next to me and put his hand on my shoulder. He introduced himself as I can't remember who, from the Samaritans. All I ever said to him was "Will we ever learn?" and he just was quiet. But that hand on my shoulder was the closest to comfort I ever got to feel during this horrible time.
I guess no matter how hard we try to escape it, that day will simply always be there in our memories. And if there was no TV, newspapers, internet to ever remind us of it again, we still would.
So here I am, having sucessfully avoided this all day, only to break down now and waffle on about it here. Go figure. Granted, it wasn't made easier by singing a beautifull arranged version of "Amazing grace" at my first rehearsal with the Nashua Choir. I had good fun, the new director is a lovely lady and full of enthusiasm and the people seem nice. It's not Woking though, of course. I miss my sopranos, Eileen and Marlie and Ingrid... and of course most of all Sel. We had such fun together, this will be very different here without a sidekick to comment on every note and song, make fun of this and that. Either way, it should be an interesting experience and more importantly, it didn't take me another 4 years to make up my mind to join. So it's good to know I'm not too old to learn from past experience ;-)

Off to bed now - let's hope the sexmaniacs above me will take it easy tonight.