The Twin Towers have been rubble longer than they’ve stood.

Since then, I’ve watched the world move on.

Since then, I’ve tried.

Since then, I write something every year. As time goes on, each post gets less engagement. I wonder why I keep doing it, but it’s one of the most impactful days of my life, and I still don’t understand what happened.

Since then, nobody knows what to say to me.

Since then, I’ve been denied insurance coverage for mental health because 9/11-related trauma is a preexisting condition.

Since then, I’ve been told by psychologists I’m over it, let’s talk about something else.

Since then, I’d been told by a mayor that the air was a little smoky, don’t worry about it.

Since then, I’ve been told by doctors that my lung issues were entirely related to smoking and not Ground Zero.

Since then, I was estranged from a family member for nearly a decade because of something callous they said about people like me.

Since then, I was hired by a long-defunct marketing blog to memorialize the tenth anniversary in a drawing I tried to make solemn but came out kind of icky.

Since then, I’ve listened to politician after politician brag about what they were doing that morning.

Since then, I watched a president cower in an undisclosed location then step onto a mound of death with a bullhorn and a mandate.

Since then, I’ve heard people, twenty- and thirty-years younger, tell edgy jokes about it.

Since then, I’ve laughed at some of these jokes.

Since then, I’ve made some of those jokes.

Since then, I’ve noted the amount of selfie sticks and smiling faces at the 9/11 Memorial in New York.

Since then, I learned just how long I could stay drunk and high before I had to shuffle, blinking, into the real world (two weeks).

Since then, I watched memos flutter to the ground in Brooklyn, disintegrating in my hands.

Since then, I sat through a church service where hundreds of people stood up and asked for a prayer, each one progressively more cynical and defeated, without the slightest bit of hope to be found.

Since then, I’ve wondered what happened to the ash-covered yuppie who cut his time at the payphone short so others could call their loved ones, in what may have been one of the kindest acts I recall seeing in New York that day.

Since then, I’ve hunted for anything that will give my heart the jolt I felt that day, and everything, from a mugging to spectacle movies to an unexpected divorce to riding the Cyclone, fell short.

Since then, I’ve hungered for someone to talk who gets it. Those who experienced it through pictures and video, whether from thousands of miles away or in Midtown, will never understand, and I would never diminish the fear and confusion they suffered.

Since then, I feel silly because countless others saw and lost so much more.

Since then, I never want to forget.

Since then, I never want to think about it again.

Since then, I take this day off every year and try to do something alive to keep the ghosts away.