Another dollar

Last week I drove to work recklessly: fast, and not really paying too much attention. When I got there I sat down at my computer and saw a blue box at the bottom of the screen from Fist, a guy I have never met in person, but nonetheless, the reason my hands were shaking.

A simple message, "I'm okay." or whatever it was and the relief was so great. We talked at length that day about the senseless violence. I admitted that I had never seen any images from 9/11.

Now I have.

I've seen the plane crash into the towers. I've seen pictures of people running with calm looks on their faces, covered in dust/ash, the only colour the blood from their wounds. I've seen people watch in horror as the pentagon was hit too. I saw people plummit head first to their certain death and the buildings collapsed. Years later, and I have finally seen it.

I am an observant person. I am quite intuitive about what people are feeling. I take alot into myself. I don't think I could have dealt with that then. It is hard for me to deal with now.

And now there is more in the UK. But the thing is, I hear reports of suicide bombings almost weekly on the news, happening in other countries. Mass killings, genocides, starvations deaths ... but I don't feel as much for those ones as I feel for this one. Is it because Fist has brought me a more personal view, brought me into more personally, as I worried about his safety and he told me about his aquaintances (all okay, according to him, last we spoke), or it because I am just as racist underneath it all?

Does that ever hurt to say.

I have avoided the pictures again. I can't bear to see. I can't watch the church services on TV. I can't bear the think about the violence of retribution that this can bring about.

How fragile I feel, clustered in my surburban home, far away from mass acts of senseless violence.