Memory...

 "The life of the dead is placed in the memory of the living..." -- Cicero

I've recently done something that I have not dared for many years. 

I've told someone the entire story of the September 11th attacks on New York, as I've experienced it,  with all the gory, gritty, painful detail that I can still recall.

I thought I was over this. I'm apparently not.

The news reports of the last 13 servicemen to die in Afghanistan tore the scab off the wound. 

Watching the Resident of the United States and his retinue of the "best-and-brightest" refuse to address the disaster, to even acknowledge it, that was the undignified flight from Kabul poured lemon juice in the wound.

Recalling all the months and years of repetitive leftist bullshit about how the right never had "an exit strategy" to end these wars, only to reveal their own hypocrisy and stupidity by apparently having no exit strategy of their own, except ignominious retreat.

The pretense that the Taliban gives a flying fuck at a rolling donut about being accepted and recognized by "the international community" that's been laid on with a trowel is no suitable bandage.

I wasn't even drunk when I did it.

This past week, I have fallen into a deep depression. My thoughts are beginning to wander off into some very dark places again, for real. The closer we get to this "historic" anniversary the more I want to leave this planet, permanently, and fly off into space.

I'm not suicidal, so if you are having a flash of concern reading this, don't fret. It's not "jump off a bridge time", it's only "can we stop, already?" time.

And I only ask the question because twenty years later, while the grief is still a burden on many and the memories of those lost still rankle, I wonder why it is that every year we have to extend this orgy of maudlin, this Mardi Gras of morbid. The "ceremony" gets longer and longer; the press coverage expands until it is all anyone can talk about; the categories of victims expand exponentially (I can't get into this point right now, as I'm too angry. Suffice to say, now people who weren't even alive twenty years ago are somehow victims of terrorism here in New York City, and they demand their place in the "festivities").

It's as if Ground Zero has become a Disneyland of Grief. The gathering of the "survivors" draws cameras and reporters like shit draws flies, and the telling, and re-telling, and re-re-telling of the day's events gets worse with each annual iteration.

I've said here before that those who lost their lives were the lucky ones. They, at the every least, have been spared the pain of memory. I've mourned them; I can't do it, anymore, and I feel very put upon by those who suggest -- or rather insist -- that it is somehow my responsibility to carry on with this sacred ritual long past the time when it is either healthy or necessary.

I don't need to be told to "Never Forget"...Because I CAN'T.

I don't need to be badgered about having the proper "respect for the dead"...because it ceased being about them a long time ago, for some of you.

The worst examples I can think of are the people who have turned their grief into a business. A part of the process of Oprah-fying America which began a long time ago was the idea that one can make grief productive by turning it into a career. Every year, the widows and orphans, especially the ones who have created "Support Groups" and taken to "victim's rights activism" and made themselves -- by virtue of proximity to the dead -- "experts" on terrorism, and milking it all for donations, government grants, and so forth, make me fucking sick.

There's one REAL victim's group whose needs have never been addressed: those of us who lived, who escaped the horror, and have had to deal with a laundry list of problems that came with survival:

The Guilt.

The Shame.

The Mental Illness.

The Addictions.

The Unidentified Health Problems.

Nothing makes me want to kill someone more than to see "a 9/11 widow" who took a government payout in return for not suing the airlines, who may have accepted a settlement from various class action suits, collected on her husband's pension and insurance benefits, crying on television about her "Foundation" needing money to continue it's "work" in "helping people understand and come to grips with the events of" that day.

Like you fucking know? You were home getting the kids ready for school when your husband bought the farm fighting for control of an airliner, jumping from a burning building, trying to put out fires, crushed under several tens of thousands of tons of concrete and steel.

I don't envy you your loss. I pity you for it.

So stop sending me requests for donations. I don't give a damn about your foundation(s); you're  millionaires playing at "activist". I rather doubt you've "helped" anyone. (and to the law firms who accepted my applications for Zadroga Bill benefits, should I ever need them, nice fucking job keeping my "confidential" information off the moocher's mailing lists!)

In the meantime, there are many of us who weren't lucky enough to get killed that day -- lucky in the sense that we would have missed 20 years of grieving widows who have often re-married with a shitload of government money in the bank -- who's seeming inability to "move on" is a fucking act. 

In retrospect, I think some of you actually enjoyed the attention your mate's untimely and horrifying demise brought you. How it made you minor celebrities in your social circles. How it gave you a power you never had before to rub elbows with the Great Ones of the Earth, who only used you for photo-ops, in the end.

And yet, there are still thousands of us that no one even bothered to lift a finger to "help".

We're wounded in the mind. 

I'm not asking for money, nor sympathy, I'm just letting everyone know this shit has gone on long enough. What started, most likely with the best of intentions, has become a full-fledged scam, complete with the emotional manipulation that entails.

It makes me angry. It makes me nauseated.

So, when someone asked the question, I answered. And unloaded all the bullshit I was still carrying, but had figured I'd lost somewhere along the line. But maybe it's just been new bullshit piled on in the last few weeks.

The Overlord has sprouted a new tumor (the last one was benign, who knows about this one?). He's tired all the time, these days. He's sick to death of Coronavirus all-day-all-the-time. He does not feel well -- the joints ache, the back aches, the breathing is getting a little more labored. I now live in deep fear of the words "sarcoidosis" and "cancer".

Not because I'm afraid to die -- dying is not all that big a deal; after all, when it happens all your troubles are over -- I just don't want to end up living as a shell of a person. Part of that is being allowed to forget those things I wish to forget. But that becomes impossible because someone -- a large number of someones --  have turned this year's 9/11 cryfest into a new-and-improved orgy of national grief.

I used to be able to tune this shit out; now it's being deposited in my mailbox by the letter carrier, shoved into my electronic communications unsolicited, and beamed into my eyeballs by my television...still.

I don't wish to remember, but I can't help but do so. Some of you won't let me, and I find it all grossly unfair, undignified, presumptuous, and imposing.