The Drum Beat of September
This year, here’s how it started:
I’m on a plane, flying out over New York City at night. It’s gorgeous, always — never gets old. I’m in the window seat, watching our ascent, when it happens. A streak of light, fast, followed by another. The plane tilts, the pilot deftly avoids what I now realize is a missile, an attack. There’s relief, terror — and for me, a feeling of sorrowful inevitability. I knew it. I knew it would happen again.
I sob to a friend, wonder what damage has been done on the streets below, how many have died. We’re not safe anymore.
And then, that’s it. I wake up in a sweat. The nightmare lingered with me, so I tell my husband about it over coffee in the morning. It’s hard for him to hear — but he’s not surprised. “Look at the date, hon.” It’s August 31st — just at the start of what we’ve come to call The Drum Beat of September.
The dream is an iteration of others. The usual is more like this:
I’m driving on the NJ Turnpike. The plane that’s meant to land at Newark twists, rolls, and crashes into the road, narrowly missing my car. I see every detail of destruction, with action-movie clarity. It’s horrific. They’re going to say it was an accident, but I know better.
We’re not safe anymore.
Like all good nightmares, they stay with me and scare me into the next day, but not because I think they’re real. I know they’re not. But they are inevitably present in September, and are a reminder of that part of me I try to box away and hide in a corner.
So, here we go again.
More people know now than used to. I’m more OK with talking about my experiences on 9/11 than I was. And to my close friends, I’ll make the same self-conscious joke I do every year, “Welp. It’s September. Time for my Annual PTSD Flare-Up.”
Time has made things easier overall. But the unpredictability of how the 9/11 anniversary will resonate with me doesn’t get easier. It worries and scares me every year. The anticipation is almost always worse than the reality.

As much as I joke about my PTSD, though, it’s real. It is truly periodic in September — and it’s much less severe than it was years ago. But when I look back at how I suffered needlessly in the first few years following 9/11, I feel a twinge of regret about how I didn’t take care of myself as I should have. Back then, people didn’t talk about PTSD in the healthier ways they do now. If there were resources available to me as a survivor, I either wasn’t aware of them, or I unwittingly ran from them.
I wanted so desperately to be OK, and wanted the grief and fear to end ASAP. I sought out counseling, because I felt I should during the very immediate aftermath, but stuck with it for only a short period of time. I drew a line between current trauma and post-trauma, ticking the box on my to-do list, and declaring it “done” after only a few short weeks. There. I’m OK now.
I didn’t want anyone to know about my survivor status, and took great pains to hide it. I was afraid of the stigma of being a survivor, because of my perception of what it implied. Would people see me as damaged goods? Broken and crazy?
Looking back — I was fine, functional, happy, living a normal 20something-in-NYC life. But, there’s no denying my PTSD: I had periodic, physical symptoms of post-traumatic stress. Aside from the dreams (that didn’t stay fenced in during September just yet) — my teeth were chattering, I was walking around with a lump in my throat. My heart would beat out of my chest, hyper alive with fight/flight. The smell of a short-circuited hair dryer brought me back to evacuating 2WTC44. I learned to set timers while cooking so I wouldn’t burn everything while distracted. I don’t think I slept a full night through that first year. I had incredible survivor’s remorse — compounded by the shame and anger I felt at having lost my job a few months after the attacks. Things felt bad and out of my span of control, so for me, the best I could do was push it away, and control what I could — working hard, running, taking singing gigs.
It was not an ineffective coping strategy. While it was incomplete in terms of present, active self-care, life wasn’t all bad — not by a lot. Even in the first year — it was mostly good. I embraced life in a way I hadn’t yet. I had fun. It was time for me to get out of that toxic work environment anyway. I started running regularly, and generally prioritizing myself. I had an incredible, supportive partner (now husband); landed very much on my feet with a great job; completed a young artist program at an opera house in NYC; toured with a traveling opera company. But for years, I struggled so much with wanting to hide my status as a survivor. I still don’t really know why I currently am still inclined to hide it. So much time has passed, that surely people will take me for who I am, and not for what happened to me. But I still struggle.
And the anniversary, 17 years later. My husband asked me, a week to go until 9/11/18, “How you doing with the anniversary this year?” I didn’t know how to answer, because I never do. The dreams are back, the lump-in-throat probably will be too. Shouldn’t this be a non-issue by now? (Of course not.)
I take comfort in the hard lessons the anniversary invariably serves up, tough-love style. This year, the first lesson came to me in the form of my 11 year old son’s school homework assignment: watch two 9/11 videos. My first reaction was indignation: this is so inappropriate! How dare his teacher assign such a thing! He’ll be traumatized! But then, I realized, as I was watching them with him (sidebar — they were awful, sometimes-cheesy, sensationalist YouTube compilations with horrific images mixed in. Yuck.): it’s history. It’s fine they assigned it. He saw those videos through the same lens as I saw documentaries about Pearl Harbor when I was a kid. A terrible day in our history, but far away, and not my story. I realized then that I don’t need to protect my boys the way I thought I would need to, after telling them my story last year. It’s different for them, because I was there, but it’s still far away. They’re OK.
The second lesson came to me on my commute to work. As I exited the subway at Houston Street and Broadway, I saw a table table set up, with 3 police officers on duty to do random passenger security checks. This happens in NYC, every September. Military in Penn Station. Frighteningly large firearms. Army fatigues and helmets. We New Yorkers are used to this reality. Just is what it is.
I walked past the officers, hurrying to my office. I got halfway up the stairs, and then told myself that this time, I would not just keep walking as usual. I turned around to go talk to them, and introduced myself. “Hi guys. That time of year again.” They smiled and nodded, knew exactly what I meant. I braved up, took a breath, and confessed, “I’m a 9/11 survivor and just wanted to say thank you.” My voice broke. “You guys saved my life.”
It was awkward and weird, and took a beat for them to take it in. They were so kind. Of course. This spontaneous confession to strangers of what I couldn’t say to friends, this expression of the gratitude that will never be expressed to those who gave their lives to save mine, was a release I didn’t know I needed. I chatted briefly with them — they said they were glad I was OK, and told me to have a good day. I said, “I will! I’m going to have a REALLY good day.” Got chills, my teeth chattered. PTSD Flare-Up in full effect. I cried a little outside the subway. And it was OK. It was over. I went to work and had a really good day.
So what do I want. Do I want to power through the anniversary with gritted teeth, or embrace it? I ask these questions every year, and answer myself with an indecisive shrug.
I guess the best I can hope for is to be OK with whatever happens this year. To learn how to be OK with who I am and what happened to me. To acknowledge to friends — new and old — that it just, well, sucks. That my heart hurts so much this time of year. That I’m scared sometimes. That I’m angry at things done ostensibly in my name. That I want my kids to feel safe. That I wish this never happened. That I’m sorry I worried so many, back then. That I love my country. That I’m going to cry. And really, for most of the year, I don’t want to talk about it. And ultimately? To be OK with talking about it for a few weeks in September.
Because I’m pretty sure we’ll do this all again next September.