perhaps needs a content warning: talk of the 20-year anniversary of 9/11.
I dunno. This year it hits differently. I know there will be a LOT about it, already have planned to mostly stay off social media (well, I have grading I will have to do anyway over at work, and I might try to get the pillowcases for my niece made). I don't know. I know the news channels will have it all over and I fear that others will have "documentaries" (some of them more like: shockumentaries) and I'm not even counting on having the vet shows on Nat Geo Wild.
Yes, I suppose in some sense it's important to remember what happened. Like (some of us) remembering Pearl Harbor, even though it happened a long time ago.
(20 years, I suppose, is a long time. I commented elsewhere that I was glad this was on a Saturday this year; I am not sure I would feel like responding if earnest 18-year-old college students asking me what I remembered about the day. Oh, I have a LOT of memories, I just don't feel like replaying them).
But other than remembering that there were families that got a big hole ripped in them then, and that there's evil in the world.....what else can we do?
I also admit this year it hits differently because we had a couple days in early 2021 when we were losing a World Trade Center's worth of people to COVID. And we're still losing people. And the world is losing people; many countries are far worse of than we are despite our anti-vaccinationists and everything having become horrificly, stupidly political about this.
So I feel kind of flattened this year. People were talking on the news about "people came together in that time" and I kind of snorted and said "yeah for about six weeks" but really, yeah - once the shock of it was over we kind of went back to sniping at each other like we had been. And the same thing applies now, but seemingly worse. And we called first responders heroes then - and many of them are dying of horrible diseases probably traceable to what they experienced on-site. And we call nurses and doctors heroes now, and they're quitting in record numbers because they CAN'T any more. I guess "hero" is another word for "gets chewed up by life."
Someone linked the "jumping man" article and I started to read it, and had to nope out - I could feel myself tensing up and tearing up. Granted, that was, for me, the worst thing in the whole parade of bad things - that people, apparently with no choice left in life, who could not escape (hemmed in by fire) chose instead to end it by jumping to their deaths. And I can't imagine that; I can't imagine what one thinks in those last desperate seconds when one realizes there is no escaping death, the only choice is "by fire" or "by gravity."
What a horrible time. What horrible times these are. In many ways, what a horrible world we inhabit, and yet - many of us make it worse either thoughtlessly (literally) or deliberately because we want to give back as good as we get or whatever. One principle I've tried to live by - and not always succeeded - is "do not make another person's day worse by your deliberate actions." But it seems some people just choose to be cruel, or difficult, or whatever.
And yet, our current difficulties - they are different. It's a slow-rolling tragedy, it's not over, there may NEVER be an "over" to this. There IS no coming together in this, despite many protestations in 2020 that "we're all in this together" (some were in it in 7000 square foot homes, in cities where grocery delivery was simple and easy, and were with family members who were compatible and loving; some were working as "essential" grocery workers who would get fired if they got sick and didn't show up to work; some were freelancers in tiny apartments in cities that locked down hard and they didn't see much of the outdoors for months; some people didn't feel human touch (other than maybe a doctor's appointment) for over a year). People seem meaner to me now, though I don't know if that's true or if it's just 20 more years of being battered by life, or if it's me having over-romanticized what people were like during the seven plus months in 2020 where I really didn't see another human for more than a few minutes at a time. I've lost touch with a few people I was friendly with; one moved away, another has gone full hermit, and since I had relatively few in-person friends before, losing contact with two is a huge thing.
I also admit: I am deeply disappointed. I thought the pandemic would be "mostly over" by now - but here, the virus is still spreading. I have two students on their SECOND 14-day quarantine of the semester. I know medical centers are overwhelmed. And so I'm still masking in public, still limiting trips out, still having limited human contact. Because I want to avoid a breakthrough infection and I don't want to risk maybe passing it to a vulnerable person - or an unvaccinated kid. And it stinks. I'm tired and sad and it feels harder to find things that are rewarding in life - I am still pretty much in 'survival' mode, where I'm getting my work done but that's about it.
One thing I miss are simple companionable things. Most of the things I am still doing - that I still can do, because a lot of groups have just suspended themselves for now - are things where I have responsibility: eldering at church, running CWF meetings, secretary in AAUW. I just want something where I can be part of a group, where I can participate, without having to help run the darn thing. And I can't find ANYTHING.
And yeah yeah, I'm doing all the self-care junk they recommend: trying to eat healthfully, getting exercise, trying to sleep (but balancing time to cook and exercise with time to sleep is hard sometimes when you work full time). I'm trying to do some "mindfulness" though mostly that's retreating into a book before bed. The one thing I don't have is much contact with other people (other than over cursed Zoom, and I am so tired of Zoom I could scream) and maybe that's why the other "self care" seems not to be working that well.
But yeah, I'm just tired. It feels to me right now that there are 20 separate dumpster fires going on in the world, and that's eating my attention, and I feel like remembering ANOTHER terrible thing - a thing that happened a long time ago, when I was younger and still idealistic and still felt like what I did made a positive difference in the world - is just one thing too many, especially since there is literally nothing I can do to help it. (Of course, there's precious little to nothing I can do to help the current problems either).
It was not a good week of teaching - I didn't do well on Wednesday, in retrospect it was probably because I was lowgrade sick with that stomach but and didn't realize it. Gave an exam this week which I graded and performance was not good, and I don't know if it's me not teaching well, the students being poorly prepared, or two years of "virtual" learning having just broken the students to the point where they're going to have a hard time coming back from it - and I don't have the skills or energy to get them there. And I have more grading tomorrow.
the only bright spot I can think of is that I found out "Community" is on Amazon Prime for free - I was thinking of the blanket fort episode the other day, and wanted to see it again, and I guess I can - maybe tomorrow evening I watch some selected episodes while knitting
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