there have been three times in the past two years when i’ve had serious trouble sleeping because of external things: the first few nights following september 11, the first couple weeks after columbia fell apart almost two months ago, and last night.
i went out for a run and the news channels were supposing this and supposing that and talking about bush’s 48 hour deadline that had just expired. a mere 45 minutes later, i came home to find that bush had just addressed the country and we had just started bombing iraq. how quickly things happen.
in 1991 i was only in middle school. i remember the first conflict with iraq through the haze of having been a kid. it didn’t affect me; in fact, it sort of fascinated me because i didn’t realize the reality of it. i remember clipping news articles to make a scrapbook. i remember the patriotic songs on the radio, “proud to be an american” and such. i even became pen pals with a soldier who was in saudi arabia, and we traded four or five letters. one sheet of stationary he wrote on had pictures of the desert and camels all down the side. but i didn’t really understand the reality.
this time it’s different. maybe because i’m older, because i’m adult. maybe because i live alone, and watching cnn show pictures of tracer fire in the air freaks me out, and makes me wish there were someone else in my apartment, for comfort, safety in numbers. i dunno.
i’m off to atlanta this afternoon.