forgetting

I have been pretty down lately, as I had indicated in previous blogs. I'm gonna go ahead and blame sobriety. Without the joyous side effects that come with night after night of heavy drinking, how else am I supposed to forget the instances of life that constantly torment me?

I'm kidding (kind of). I'm really not an alcoholic (I don't think). What my real problem is, I think, is that I overthink everything. Thus, I have made every moment of my life highly dramatized in my memory. The sobriety has allowed me more time to reminisce while sitting alone in my dark and bare-walled apartment. Which has also allowed me more time to further dramatize such memories. As I present these memories to you, O great cyber-audience, please keep in mind that this is just a dramatization.

Memory #1
As today is September 12, how could I not make the first memoir be about September 11?

In remembering that infamous day, everyone talks about where they were when it happened or when they first found out. (I imagine people wearing T-shirts that say, "9/11 Where were you?" or quirky discussions on VH1's I Love the 21st Century.) I had spent the night at a friend's place and went home to get ready for an 11am class. I must have walked into my apartment at 9:00am. My roommate, Lindsay, was sitting in front of the tv and said, "I think a plane just flew into the World Trade Center."
Pretty sure that my beloved roommate was mistaken and confused (as she often seems to be... love you Linds!), I said, "Are you watching a movie?"
"No, seriously," she said, offended at my blatant disregard for her reliability as a news source. "It's all over the..."
Just then, we both watched as a second plane flew into the second tower. That's the easy part to remember.

A close family friend, Maria Teresa Santillian aka Marites, worked in Tower 1. Her cousin, Judy Fernandez, worked in the same building. I've known them both for as long as I can remember. They were a part of my family years before I was.
When I was 7, Marites was the first person to sleep over in our new house. I followed her and Cheryl around, copying everything they did and annoying them to no end I'm sure. I begged them to braid my hair because I didn't (and still don't) know how to make a French braid. Cheryl got mad at me because I was hogging Marites. We both loved her and didn't want to share. Alas, Cheryl won out (being that her and Marites were the same age) and I was stuck being the little sister for life. I didn't know that life would be so short.

Marites was as nice as she was beautiful. She didn't deserve to die. She went to work on time one day and ended up being a martyr for the American way. I still do not understand what happened and I expect I will never understand why. I am tired of the politics that surround her death: from the pissed-off liberals saying America in all its arrogance deserved/asked for an attack to the pissed-off conservatives rallying behind an arguably retarded president into an unrelated war against an enemy that shares the same skin color as Osama Bin Laden.

On September 11, 2001, my family friends died a very unfortunate death and try as I might, I am having a lot of trouble forgetting.