Playback

"I'm watching something really cool about 9/11," my stepson called from the family room. "Ah, this is so cool!" I had to see what he was watching. It was a documentary of 9/11 from the average person's video camera. The second part of the documentary was the people on the street who were behind the camera describing their experience. I was glued to the screen, like a deer in headlights.

One guy was filming this man who was listening to a radio on the hood of a car, and looking at the World Trade Center Buildings with one of them burning. All of the sudden, you see the second plane crash dead center into the second World Trade Center Building. "Aaarrgh," we all scream in the living room, like it was happening that day. Except that my stepson was seven then. I met him about a week later after 9/11.

The same guy describes the footage of these firemen we saw earlier in the documentary. They are heading off to the World Trade Centers with a hose and a fire extinguisher, with expressions on their faces like, "what are we supposed to do with these?" He explains how none of those firemen made it that day. More groans from our audience.

My husband and I are now too depressed to eat dinner. My stepson recounts how he was too young to really understand it then.

It reminds me of when I was pregnant. I felt like I was having similar playbacks of my childhood. When I was growing up into young adulthood, I always thought I had a great childhood. I never really made a connection between the periods of depression and suicidal thoughts I had as a teenager and my childhood. After having a series of bad relationships in my 20s, I finally decided I needed to take a look at myself rather than blaming others for my problems.

When I was pregnant, having these childhood memories traumatized me as much as watching this 9/11 documentary tonight did. Only back then, my nervous system was so easily triggered that I couldn't deal with all these traumas piling up on one another. It was a train wreck waiting to happen...