I get email

I was first drawn to your Forbes blog because I had been laid off and, well, misery loves company.

But your Atlantic blog on PTSD takes that to a whole new level. I note that one of the comments says it is the 'most well-written' etc and I agree.

So why not just post a comment and be done with it? Even with the anonymity barrier of the internet I cannot go there.

I went to Tulane so Katrina was a special focus: few people now remember that it was the counterpunch of Katrina that caused the trouble--Vermont is the NOLA of Irene.

But that is not why I am writing.

What you said about your experience regarding Katrina made me confront something I have been struggling with for now very nearly ten years exactly.

When the sky in NYC turns crisper and bluer as fall approaches all I can think of is 9/11 and how it was that I was at a funeral in [redacted] NJ that morning rather than walking in between the twin towers to my office at [redacted]

And it was not just that day. For months afterward the air I breathed to and from work was rancid and acrid. I tried describing it to a friend who happens to be a Vietnam Vet and he held up his hand and just said 'stop'--I know that smell. You are smelling bodies. Bodies slowly burning. And as the ferry painfully slowly took me to and from [redacted] and [redacted] I was an unwilling tourist of tombstones of twisted steel. No one talks about that.

OK. So I have taken a bit off my chest. And I feel a bit better now.

Thanks

[redacted]

[IMAGE]

My hurricane story

I wrote about my Hurricane Katrina experience for TheAtlantic.com. 

I took the boxes and my papers from the mostly undisturbed kitchen. From the rest of the house, I picked and chose from the things that didn't appear to have mold or asbestos on them. The following day, I drove out of the city. There was a boat in the middle of the street. The houses gaped, slack-jawed and empty-faced. I drove across the eastbound span of the Twin Span Bridge over Lake Pontchartrain, and parts of the westbound span of the bridge were simply gone. I drove an hour through a destroyed forest, and when I looked up in the sky, I tried to imagine a thing so big that it could destroy so much. 

[READ]

I get email

Hi Susannah,

I read today's post and thought to email you again. Your description of unemployment is dead on, and for me, the experience just ended yesterday with me getting lucky and somehow landing the job of my dreams. There was no logic to it - a blind resume drop on monster.com led to an interview where I was completely at ease. I'm excited for the future but don't have any advice My story has no great arc, but it manages to have a happy ending. Unemployment wasn't much fun at all, and I'm grateful to have a wife who supported me through the low points of the past several months.

Thanks for writing your blog - throughout the process it's been a reminder that I'm not alone in my boredom and frustration.

Best wishes for the weekend, and thanks again.

[Redacted]

Novelizing

I'm revising my novel online. 

"I don’t want to put your head in the toilet," he says quietly. The stripper’s face falls. "But if that’s where your head belongs, that’s where it's going to go. How often do they clean the toilets here? Regularly? I don’t think so."

Are you following?

Marilyn

I wrote a post on my Forbes blog about visiting the Marilyn Monroe statue.

On the Saturday I saw the statue, spectators swarmed around her ankles. Earlier, it had been raining, but now the sky was mostly blue. At Lake Michigan, the annual Chicago Air & Water Show was underway. Downtown, the screams of fighter jets whizzing by overhead reverberated between the skyscrapers surrounding Marilyn, her head tilted back, her eyes closed, her mouth smiling.

[READ]