Well, I guess I really should go home and do something useful like laundry or make dinner or sit on my bloody arse and watch tv - but who wants to do that when I can sit here and talk about something that has been bothering me for a week now? I have been trying to figure out what to say about the attack on the WTC bldgs and the Pentagon. It took a few days to sort through all my feelings, and I think I have finally reached a point where I am ready to write about it.

I watch on the box as people talk about how they work on through the pain of the sun, wind, and rain and reporters ask if the magnitude of the situation has hit them yet. I realize from their faces that it hasn't. It hasn't hit them yet, and if they are anything like me, it won't hit them for months, maybe even years. They don't realize what they are seeing is real, their brains have shut down the parts that make them adjust immediately and they just function as robots. Robots that help the helpless, care for the sick, and give to the needy.

Although I haven't lived through a terrorist attack, I have narrowly escaped a natural disaster and dealt with the far reaching aftermath. People ask all the same questions and I repeat all the same answers. It became a story from someone else's life and has no meaning for me when I tell it now. It only hits deep when these same feelings are seen in others eyes. I can see it in the people that wandered the streets after the attacks. They have this look of bewilderment that I know all too well. I have been to a place I called home and not recognized it. I have wandered the streets of my hometown and not know which way to go. I have looked for someone to tell me that it was just a bad dream and found only reality. I look to others for answers and all I find are questions. They are always the same: How did you escape this tragedy? Where were you when it happened? Did you know people that died? What was it like?

To this last question, the response is something that people don't understand. I can't explain what it was like, because it was like nothing I have ever known. No words can describe the horror that ran through my body, the fear that filled my heart, the screams that tore through my head and ultimately escaped my throat. It was like something you've only seen in a movie, you think there is no way this can be real, your mind can't comprehend the things your eyes are telling it. All the things you know are gone, landmarks have vanished, people wander around with this indescribeable look in their eyes.

As I watch the box, I listen to the reporters ask all these same questions of the victims of the attack in New York and I know the answers even before they are spoken. They are the same answers any victim will give you: I was there but I couldn't believe it was really happening. People I know are dead. I am not sure what to do with myself right now, but I will go on with life because I have to, I need to, I want to. I don't know what to do with these feelings of guilt. If not for this or that, I would be dead right now.

And the questions the survivors ask themselves: Should I go out and help other people? Should I seek help from others? Why can't I get to sleep at night without thinking of that day, that hour, that minute, that phone call or cursed red light that ended up saving my life? Will I ever be able to move on from here? Why do I feel so guilty about being alive?

I think that this quote from the editor of the Miami Herald, Leonard Pitts, best expresses how I feel about this particular tragedy:

"So I ask again: What was it you hoped to teach us? It occurs to me that maybe you just wanted us to know the depths of your hatred. If that's the case, consider the message received. And take this message in exchange: You don't know my people. You don't know what we're capable of. You don't know what you just started.

But you're about to learn."

That pretty much sums up how I feel about it. I am sad, confused, amazed at the evil in some hearts, and basically just mad as hell.

Torn between anger and sadness,

C