I really didn’t want to do this. I tried, I really tried. I got up this morning and saw the date, and I made the conscious decision to make it through the day without falling into the feelings usually associated with this date. I made it through almost the whole workday, even, which is probably more than I expected.

But then, on the way home from work, I was listening to talk radio, and of course they brought up the attacks, and were discussing what happened that day, and how crazy it was, and what was happening now as a result.

After a minute or two, I wasn’t hearing the hosts anymore, I was completed lost in retrospection. I thought about who I am now, compared to who I was then, and how almost unrecognizable my past self is. I thought about what happened that day, playing back the tape in my mind. I remember everything that happened that day. I mean, every single conversation, every insignificant moment from the moment I woke up until I went to sleep. I remember being so racked with emotion, I just couldn’t function. And I didn’t know what to feel. Anger, sadness, regret, fear, all of it swirling around at once… I remember my piano teacher chewing out our whole class about our practice habits, and us just staring back at her, shocked that she’s saying anything, much less something so trite in the light of things. I remember watching Roger Rabbit that night, trying to get my mind off of things and think about something — anything — else. I remember that not working… and now here I was, a full seven years later, driving down a crowded highway at rush-hour, almost needing to pull over because I didn’t know if I could drive through that amount of tears.

I don’t know how to accurately write about these feelings, even years later, and I don’t want to bog you guys down with it too much. But I did want to share some songs that were especially important to me today in processing some of the raw emotion:

“The Last Blueshift” by Glisten
“Every New Day” by Five Iron Frenzy (the live version, from ‘The End is Here”)
and “A Three-Legged Workhorse” by This Will Destroy You

I don’t know why I gravitated twoards those in particular, but there you go. Music has always been an important part of how I handle life. Is there anything that you guys remember listening to seven years ago? What about today?