Sometimes I wonder how much 9/11 really effected my mind. I stand by my claim that I came through that year with my already unusual mind mostly intact. But then there are times when I realize that my subconscious will always carry the weight of that period. I was young on the fire department when 9/11 hit. (I still am young on the job for that matter.) Sometimes I feel my hair go up and my anger rise when somebody makes what I construe to be an ignorant suggestion that I was too young on the job to have truly experienced the pain and loss 9/11. I realize I’ve probably been wrong each time I’ve had that feeling… One night I was out with a couple firefighters, and some others, including one girl who is very active in 9/11 related issues and who lost a brother to the attacks. At one point, something was said about “nuking the whole Middle East” and half serious, half tongue-in-cheek I answered, “Yeah, but that will f*** up the environment on our side of the world.” To which the girl for a split moment turned on me and said, “You try digging on that pile for eight months and then tell me what you think about nuking the Middle East.” It was a ridiculous thing to say, ignorant, and certainly made more so by the amount of alcohol that had been consumed. Still, I had to walk away to keep from turning the night sour. Because my anger was up. Although this girl had had a horrible personal experience with 9/11, losing a brother, what did she know about me? I did spend my time on that pile while it was a pile, and pit once it became a pit. I went down to ground zero any chance I could on-duty, and often went down when I was off-duty since the firehouse I was in at the time gave me an opportunity of access that most other houses did not have. I poisoned myself down there. I put images into my head that will always be there to creep up on me. Laying in my bunk in the firehouse last night, I was exhausted, but for some reason I was thinking about one time helping to dig out two bodies, if you could still call them bodies. They were flattened skin and bones, two people rolled together like crumpled paper, blending in almost identically to the densely packed pile of debris they were being dug out from. When it came time to put them in a bag to be brought to the morgue, I was the one who was in position to lift them and put them in this bag, and I can’t forget how weightless they were, how I felt that there was nothing there, how I wondered how these could possibly be two human beings. There was the time we saw a pair of boots hanging down from the jaw-like scoop of one of the machines at work on the pile, old, dark blood dripping down off the toes. I remember how gingerly this machine layed down the body, somehow keeping the scoop of debris from covering him up. It was a firefighter that time, intact, except for a ripped open midsection. It must have been three weeks in, and his skin had changed color, and I tried not to look at the face. I remember scooping his guts with a shovel while guys at his feet and shoulders lifted him into a body bag. And all the time I was gagging because the mask I was wearing was too small around my nose and there was not a good seal. I remember a lot of things… how one of the widows from my firehouse asked me during Thanksgiving, “How do you like being a firefighter?” And I answered that I love it, and she said, “How can you love something that doesn’t love you back?” She said, “You know what I should put on his tombstone? ‘Are you happy now?’”

Usually I try to be funny so I wonder why I am writing about this here and now. I guess I’m just reminding myself that there will always be times that this will creep into my head, and that I am not completely uneffected. So why am I writing it down for anyone to read? I know it makes an interesting read.