#ihatewar

And the fact that that is all it really is to me is something that I can never take for granted.  I lost nobody, especially nobody close to me, and I live my life today with no personal tragic story to remember, even though those truly existed in the thousands. It's a memory that, for me, contains only family togetherness in front of a television screen, and believe me - even that was more than enough. 

I hate the fact that for a while it turned me into someone I look back on with vague disgust. The palpable fear was present inside me, and I was only sixteen. I didn't know what to do, or who to talk to, I just knew that my entire country was terrified and at sixteen I probably reacted a bit more radically than I would even think to, now.  Not knowing, not even knowing there was much to know, I reacted as many people still react - with blind anger, and a rush of satisfaction when we launched not one but TWO wars to get revenge.  Hundreds of thousands later (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/oct/22/true-civilian-body-count-iraq) in Iraq alone and I have grown up - I don't feel my country has yet.  We've enacted countless "security protocols" (see: Department of Homeland Security) and use tons of fear-laden diatribe to continue to relive this day over and over. Never forget, yes, but it's not  healthy as a person or as a country to linger, to lock toys away and put trophies in the basement. To not talk about forgiveness, re-evaluation of our own external international policy, to not understand that things happen because other things had happened and to not take responsibility or even understand that. Yes, several thousand dead civilians on American soil from an external terrorism campaign.  It has cast us in debt, it has destroyed our economy, and it has provided lasting negatives.  

But why are we still spending weeks rehashing the same old things? I get it - I understand that if you play the last known messages of someone that died in a horrific way, I will cry. I still cry, eleven years later. TEN FULL YEARS of living through the rage and the grief and the pain of knowing that it wasn't unpredictable, and I will still cry. I tear up when I hear the adverts. I haven't forgotten. Nobody has forgotten. 

Why are you milking from me every emotional penny you can get? 

I'm incensed, absolutely incensed, that we still have troops in Afghanistan. I am sick and tired of war, of people dying just because fat cats won't be the ones to feel the pain. I don't feel like my personal freedom was in jeopardy after 9/11, not on 9/12/01 and not on 9/11/12. I feel my government is taking advantage of how they've manipulated me into feeling and I'm tired of it.

I'm tired of crying. Why aren't we rebuilding yet?