Posted by finelinebob on May 9, 2004, at 4:28:25
In reply to Re: The Prodigal Bob returns...., posted by allisonm on May 8, 2004, at 8:57:30
I **do** remember you, allisonm -- one of my best friends is a double-L allison, too, so I never forget a double-L allison =^)
And don't demean your own situation! I wasn't in the Trade Center. At the time, I didn't know anyone who died. I didn't have any friends or family members directly involved. Hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers were in the same boat as me, but estimates of New Yorkers suffering from PTSD after 9/11 was put at at least 500,000. So, how do we all justify being traumatized when we had no "personal stake" in it?
It was sooooooooo hard to allow myself to have a right to that trauma. Seven months later, I got some freelance web work with an advertising firm. The first job I worked was for Cantor Fitzgerald. They are a stock trading firm that had offices on floors 103-105 of the south tower. They had 1300 employees worldwide -- they lost more than 700 people that day. My project manager on that job was at their offices regularly, and he knew a couple dozen people there. I got to develop the memorial site that allowed people to view QuickTime movies of eight CF employees telling stories about the friends they lost that day.
But pain is pain. Seeing those people who basically lost the colleague that sat on their left and the one that sat on their right talking about how they had to carry on with the work their friends felt so strongly about was inspiring. Seeing my PM take a week off to be a counselor at a summer camp for kids of CF employees that died, that was inspiring. But whether any of those folks had a "right" to any "more" pain, or whether they had a more "valid" claim to it -- well, that doesn't make my own pain any less intense or less valid. No matter how much I tell myself so.
I guess what makes them inspiring is not that they had more pain or a better claim on it. They owned their pain, it didn't own them.
So, I'm glad to be an inspiration ... =^)
flb
poster:finelinebob
thread:344644
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/2000/20040501/msgs/345002.html