Mary Bellamy

I feel this way every year. Every year since 2001, there has been mourning, ceremony and memories. And every year I get angry, but it's not the anger you'd expect. Maybe anger isn't even the right word. It's hard to explain, but here it goes:

My 9/11 was not your 9/11. And I don't want to spend my time talking about what the day was like for me. I certainly don't want to hear about what it was like for you. The sensation gets stronger now that I live in Alaska. I don't care about hunters who were stranded for days because planes couldn't fly in to pick them up. I don't care that you woke up to a phone call. I can't quite put it into words succinctly, and I've already devoted more space to it than I ever wanted to. Just let people have the privacy they might need. I'm not going to put my emotions on public display.