PTSD - Birthday - Firefighters Emergency Workers - This Horror

[Catlady (Rita Prince Winston)]

Judy Harrow (she is a minister with an M.A. in Counselling) posted 
this on another list:

> Hi, all

> Y'know, after yesterday's horrors, all of us are at some risk for 
> Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, even if we were not actually in 
> lower Manhattan. We worried about each other, and about other 
> friends and family members. We watched it on television or listened
> to it on the radio, over and over. We all are feeling invaded, 
> vulnerable. We may all experience some psychological effects as 
> time goes on.

> So, here's a link < http://www.nimh.nih.gov/anxiety/ptsdfacts.cfm >
> to a pamphlet on PTSD from the National Institute of Mental Health.
> It's a bit more technical than I would have liked, but it does 
> contain the basic information and some links.

> Please, let's all be gentle with ourselves and one another, and 
> pray for peace.

I'm just about as far from Lower Manhattan as a person can be and 
still be in the Lower 48, and almost all the most important people I 
worried about have checked in, but even so I am still SICK about this 
horror.

Amy Z wrote:

> Today is the birthday of John Walton, aka Moderator with Rock #47, 
> Crazy Ivan, Singer of the Song of Time, and (occasionally) Singer 
> of "My Heart Will Go On"!  I'm sure he isn't feeling too festive, 
> so all the more reason to send best wishes along 
> Have a good one, John.  We all need to remember our blessings in a
> time like this, and your presence on earth is one of them.  
> to you <raises butterbeer>.

John, Amy's right, you are a blessing to me just from these lists and 
fanfics. (I get the impression that you have been much more of a 
blessing to those disabled kids you were working with.) You were on 
the top ten list of New Yorkers I was worried about. I hope very much 
your birthday isN'T ruined forever for you by calendrically 
associated memories. Schnoogles.

Amy Z wrote:

> Another September 12 birthday . . . Keith Fraser, a scantily clad 
> woman in a cake is headed your way!  (Uh oh, there go my feminist 
> credentials.)

Keith, she's good looking, intelligent, SINGLE, and she LOVES Ginny 
the Vampire Slayer. Schnoogles.

Michelle Barnett wrote:

> The Fire Service has lost many of its Brothers and Sisters 
> yesterday, and even into today.

I've already written on another list that I cannot IMAGINE such an 
immensity of pain as the grief of the MILLIONS of bereaved people. 
Which Of Course includes the families, friends, and colleagues of the 
martyred emergency personnel -- 20 years ago, a NY Post or Daily News 
headline with 'Hero Cop" or "Hero Firefighter" meant that he or she 
had been killed in the line of duty, and it IS true, they ARE Heroes, 
and so are their families.

But I had rather more selfish thoughts about the loss (death! 
killing!) of the Emergency Workers -- even before the second plane 
hit, every firefighter and police officer in the city was headed to 
try to rescue people in Tower One, and more coming in from the rest 
of the region, and I had the cynical thought that that would be a 
good time to be a criminal uptown, and a bad time for an uptown 
apartment building to catch on fire.

But now, so many never coming back to their precincts and stations, 
the next FIVE OR TEN YEARS will be a good time for criminals and a 
bad time for buildings to catch on fire... It will take a long time 
just to recruit so many people who have what it takes for such a 
hard, dangerous, stressful, responsible job...

Starling wrote (on main list):

> When I am called to duty, God, wherever flame may rage,
> Give me strength to save some life, whatever be its age.

> And if according to my fate, I am to lose my life,
> Please Bless with your protecting hand, my children and my wife.

Abbie Starling, I cried while reading your post. Barb's posts about 
how to tell the children (on OT) have literary excellence and Mindy's 
post (on main list) made me see what she was describing, but the only 
post that made me cry besides your post was what Mindy wrote about 
the man who faxed his wife that he was going to die.

David Frankis wrote:

> Also, I feel cut off from Americans by this, because life carries on 
> here.  All I can say is that you have my fellow-feelings.

You aren't any further away from ground zero [flashback! twenty years 
ago: "ground zero" graffiti with mileage and arrows painted on the 
sidewalks  -- the same sidewalks -- WTC seemed to be the ground zero 
they were pointing at. I never figured out if it was ads for a new 
nightclub or ads for a ban on nuclear weapons tests) than I am (Los 
Angeles). I took the bus to work yesterday morning listening to news 
radio on my Walkman and looking out the window at commuters waiting 
at bus stops and children walking to school and kept thinking: "They 
don't know yet what has happened, they still think life is normal." 
Life is SUPPOSED to be normal here, basically only Federal Office 
Buildings, Federal Courthouse, and Airports shut down and sent people 
home.

Milz wrote:

> Yesterday, after I checked in with this list and the main list, I 
> kept thinking about GoF, specifically, the first Moody lecture 
> ("CONSTANT VIGILANCE") and Dumbledore's speech ("Remember Cedric").
> These chapters and passages have new meaning for me today.

Barb wrote:

> We don't know what to tell our kids.  How do you explain the 
> unexplainable?  How to you explain people insane enough to kill 
> themselves and thousands of other people for--what? 

One of the thoughts that came to me: In the Voldemort Years, did the 
wizarding folk feel like *this* for ELEVEN YEARS!!! What could they 
tell their kids?

Herald Talia wrote (on main list):

> I guess Sirius Black (or Peter Pettigrew) had nothing on these
> terrorists. Thirteen people with a single curse? Contrast that with
> 1,000s of people with a single plane. I don't want to be a Muggle 
> anymore! 

That's why Laurin wrote (on Off-Topic): "go to Barb's fic on 
schnoogle and read the beginning of her chapter 26.  You don't have 
to know what's happening, just trust me.  It's Mad Eye Moody talking 
to a class about the aftermath of terrorism." 

Barb's Moody teaches DADA by teaching why people go evil by assigning 
essays on Shakespeare's plays, and one point he reinforces (altho' I 
haven't looked up chapter numbers) is how much more Awful of things 
Muggles do to Each Other.

Madhuri wrote:

> Even though it's the middle of the night where I live, almost 
> everyone I know is up, and shocked at the tragedies. Some of my 
> friends have relatives who might have been affected, 

Yael wrote:

> In the mean time, we're all praying for my cousin (and close 
> friend) who worked in the WTC. (God, I'm using past tense). Our 
> only hope is that he hasn't made contact because he stayed here to
> help the wounded. He is the kind of guy to do that.

Madhuri and Yael reminded me of what a small world it has become. 
Madhuri is on the other side of the world in India and Yael is 
one-third of the way around in Israel and they have RL friends and 
relatives here. I hope that everyone I know is safe INCLUDING their 
hearts -- may all of everyone's loved ones be safe so my friends' 
hearts aren't broken.

But it strikes me as ironic: I bet Yael's cousin worried about 
whether she was safe from terrorist attacks and never worried that it 
would happen to him New York. I'm not sure whether it is relevant 
that India had a MONSTER earthquake last summer, HUGE loss of life 
but NOT caused by human beings.  

Susan Hall wrote on main list:

> it is possible to survive through terrorist actions (I live in 
> Manchester, which was flattened by a bomb in 1996) and even become 
> stronger as a result - it's the only way to beat these bastards.

Heather Edmonds wrote:

> Speaking as A Londoner who is regrettably used to terrorist 
> activity although thank god never on this ghastly scale. Hard 
> though it is stay calm and try to carry on as normal, panic and 
> giving up is the way to let these evil people win.

Herald Talia wrote (on main list):

> I have a slightly skewed perspective on this, since I was a student
> in Israel, where attacks like this are all too common. It's like a 
> mental toothache over there - will this trip to the post office or 
> the park be my last? But Americans aren't braced for it. 

Karen McVicker wrote (on HPff): 

> I grew up Catholic in Belfast....my parents wanted a brighter 
> future for us so, when I was 18, my family emigrated to Canada. 
> I thank my parents every day for that move.  You can't begin to 
> appreciate the freedom and general peace of mind the people in 
> North America have unless you have lived in a troubled place.  
> This is what makes this attack so jarring to me.  After living with
> violence on a daily basis in Northern Ireland, I've really enjoyed 
> living a quiet life in North America for the past 15 years and 
> raising a family without worrying about that sort of stuff -- now, 
> with this blatant terrorist assault, things have changed and I, 
> for one, am not looking forward to what the future has in store. 
> I can only pray.

Genevieve Pratt wrote:

> I remember how terrifying it was to be in Oklahoma back when the 
> federal building was bombed so I can relate.  

I put Genevieve's quote last in that round-up because she reminds 
us that this horror was NOT the end of 'American exceptionalism' 
in the matter of safety. Even the Oklahoma City bloodbath was not the 
end (if I said it was, someone could say "we're still an exception: 
only our fellow-citizens can do this to us, not foreigners"). The end 
of America's safety from terrorism was the World Trade Center bombing 
in 1993, which those terrorists had hoped would do as much damage as 
this, and would have collapsed at least one tower if they had placed 
the explosive where they planned. We've been living on borrowed time 
since then.

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