9/11

Let me preface this with, I do not begin to say that my experience on 9/11/01 compares in any way to the tragedy that so many people experienced personally. But of course the day touched us all in one way or another. I have written a more detailed recounting of the day elsewhere, but as a small recap for those who don't know the story...

My wife and I were married on 9/9/01. We spent the following morning at a brunch with our family and some of the wedding party. We boarded a red-eye flight on the evening of the 10th/morning of the 11th that would take us to Jamaica for our honeymoon. We made our connection in Dallas/Fort Worth and hopped on the next leg of our journey headed for Miami. We were in the air between Dallas and Miami when the destruction of 9/11 was going on. Once we landed in Miami, no planes would leave the ground for several days. Our honeymoon canceled, and a tropical storm headed toward Florida, we ended up renting a car and driving from Miami back to Seattle, from one corner of the U.S to another.

The world had changed in an instant, and it was a somber drive home. We listened to the radio and read the newspapers as we drove, trying to put together what had happened. Everyone else we loved was thousands of miles away, and the people we saw along the way had the vacant stare of the traumatized. At the time, I joked that if we could survive this drive across the country together, that our marriage would be alright. The beach would have just made us soft. But I wonder what effect that day, and that week, had on the early part of our marriage. As I wrote in the earlier post:

We returned to Jamaica six months later. When we made it to our delayed honeymoon, I was the most depressed/out of sorts I have ever been. I’m not sure what all was weighing on me. 9/11 may have made me look at my life more closely. It may have been the jarring switch from the happiest week in my life to the worst for the country. Maybe it is the clearest manifestation of hatred I have ever seen. I’m not really sure. I haven’t put those feelings entirely behind me. 

Certainly, no one event took us down, and it was more about internal rather than external events, but it was a rough start to the marriage just the same. There was no honeymoon period, a time of excitement and great hope as we began our new life together. My heart was heavy when it should have been light, and I have no doubt that weighed on our marriage in our first year.

9/11 cut a horrific hole in our country, ramifications of which we are still feeling. I am not so foolish as to say that it was much of a factor in our divorce, but I think it may have been one of the hundreds of bricks in the wall that was built up between us.