Caterwauling

Psycho bitch upstairs has been hollering since 9 p.m.  It’s midnight and my buzz has worn off and my blood pressure is off the charts. 

On this somber day, intelligent people are reflecting and being grateful to be alive. Dis bitch be like, “Yo Yo Motherfucker” and Big Giant Pussy be all like, “Why you be like dis?” And then things and children go flying. 

Last week I was in a hotel. I’m trying to go back there in my head. But after being awakened by this ‘ho dropping glass shit on the bare floor over my bed the last two days, I don’t know how either of us is still alive right now. I really don’t. 

There was an amazing, amazing article in Washingtonian magazine, “9/10: The Day Before.” Read it. I can’t do it justice to describe it here.

I thought back to my 9/10. I probably have a diary entry about the day. But my journals are in storage. And frankly I don’t care if I ever read them again.

But I can say with near-certainty that I didn’t document the day. I had my three smoke breaks with my boys Doug and Andy at 10 a.m., 1 p.m. and 3 p.m.

Doug and I were still in that “getting to know you” phase and everything was fun and flirtation … that we were super-careful to keep away from the disapproving eyes of cranky supervisors.

I know I worked late, un-fucking up a grant proposal my little fuckup “wrote.” I got home around 11 p.m., knowing I had a 7:30 a.m. meeting with Ora Lee (her real name) and my CEO who loved to treat me like shit based on my skin color not matching hers.

Read: No real reason to wake up.

Dinner was at Fox’s Pizza Den that I could see from my bedroom window. I ate there a lot and it explains why I was morbidly obese at the time. I’m pretty sure I picked up some Moose Tracks ice cream from the CoGo’s downstairs. Planning for the weekend or, at least, for the next night of eating my feelings.

That was it. I ate that ice cream while I watched the wall-to-wall TV coverage the next night. And fought back the feeling that I was already dead. And wondered whether I were too dead to come back from it.

That’s my story. Not one worth telling in Washingtonian magazine. But probably one more people can identify with.

The thing about the 9/11 anniversary is that it’s a celebration, for the most part, of good triumphing over evil.

We lost too many lives. We lost way (and still too many) more of our military’s lives in the aftermath. We grieved and we feared and we prayed like we never prayed before.

And somehow, we got here.

Fourteen years ago, I was honestly wishing someone would drive a plane into the building I was in. Hated the job. The boss. The meeting I was in with community members I absolutely loathed.

But I loved my apartment on Mt. Washington and all the men in my life. I had great friends I could only see on the weekends (because, job). So, all hope wasn’t lost.

9/11 was probably the catalyst that sent me to D.C. like a young friend’s death catapulted my move to Florida.

Fourteen years later, I make twice as much money. I went from having never seen a beach, to living at one. I still work a lot of hours but I don’t have a tyrant throwing me shade at every available opportunity for being a different color than her. I still have plenty of gentlemen friends but they, like most of my BFFs, now live far, far away.

In any event, I generally feel like a fraud on 9/11 because of how badly I wanted off the earth’s axis when thousands of people were taken from us without that choice. But I think I’ve made the most of the extra time I’ve had. And while life isn’t what I thought it would be, it’s definitely mine to keep living the best way I can.

Tomorrow isn’t promised. But it’s implied. And that’s how we have to keep living, because not living that way made me feel like I was dying every day.