My "where were you when the planes hit" story is even less interesting than most ... I checked the wire either just before the talk portion of my show or just after I got off the air -- I can't even remember now. There was a one-liner from the AP about a plane hitting the World Trade Center. I think everyone at that time thought it was a small plane with "some idiot" or something behind the controls.

Guess we were wrong.

I don't think, even five years later, that we've begun to grasp what the events of 9/11 mean. I think they were too big for us to grasp five years ago and they perhaps still are. Plus I think they mutate over time, the way anything will after you've learned more about it, not to mention chewed on it over and over again. I also think that for those of us here in the Midwest, perhaps, in particular, we will never fully understand what those attacks meant to the people who live in New York.

So it's perhaps a measure of my tunnel vision ... my depression ... or an inability to see past the end of my nose that for five years, every time there's an interview with or about the 9/11 widows, all I can think is I lost a marriage, too -- and no one gave a damn.

I had a conversation with a friend once, a widower, who agreed that, although losing a beloved partner to death is awful, at least you know you were loved. For five years I've listened to and read about these women recalling the wonderful love of their husbands, and I think, "You had that and I'm supposed to feel sorry for you?!"

My husband's gone, too. But he quit loving me and then he split. He decided drugs were more important and I didn't have any more choice in the matter than the 9/11 widows. I'm raising a child alone, too. But nobody's writing articles about me, or sending me money, or offering me speaking engagements or feeling sorry for me -- in fact, if anything, the assumption is I'm somehow to blame. You don't get a life insurance payout when your spouse relapses, either. The same government that didn't forsee someone using a jetliner as a WMD can't win its "war on drugs" either. And the same government (loosely defined, of course) that will bend over backwards now for 9/11 victims can't even be bothered to enforce a child support order half the time. The father of my daughter is still around, making trouble for me, breaking his daughter's heart, poking at old wounds ... and yet it's the widows that garner all the sympathy? They were loved! People are looking out to make sure they're kids are taken care of! If your heart is going to be broken regardless ... they've got it made!

And now the 9/11 widows are remarrying. One gal was quotes as saying "She wasn't meant to be alone." I'm glad God came through for her, but what about the rest of us? Are we meant to be alone? What did we do to rate that?

OK, granted ... it's been a rough seven years ... the state still hasn't posted the check that I thought was coming last week and as a result I'm a little Effexor-deprived ... so the next post will take a more critical look at this line of thought (and I can hear my therapist applauding from here ...)

Perhaps it's just a coping mechanism. Take a tiny piece of the whole enormous experience ... get honked off about it -- voila! Instant coping mechanism!

Or maybe I am the solipsistic, emotionally stunted person I suspect I am ...