What 9/11 cost me

With the 10-year anniversary of 9/11 arriving Sunday, there have been numerous stories and shows on what that tragic day has cost the country.

I have to ask: What has it cost you, personally?

Everyone remembers where they were or what they were they were doing. I had gone for a run. When I returned, the phone was ringing. It was my mother; she asked if I had to go to work.

I said, "No, why?" She told me to turn on the TV; I did, and I saw the news that a plane had hit one of the towers.

As I was watching the news and talking to my mother, I saw the second plane ram into the other tower. I immediately told my mother I had to go.

I was working for the Bloomington Police Department at the time. I hung up and went into work right away. I did not call -- I just went.

I knew something was wrong, and I knew the Mall of America was in the city. I knew we had been attacked; the planes into the towers were not an accident.

In January 2003, I joined the Minnesota Army National Guard and was assigned to the 34th Military Police Company. In August of that year, I was in Afghanistan. I did a nine-month tour of duty and returned home.

I stayed in the Guard -- as a former Marine, I liked the military, and I knew I might be deployed again. In March 2009, my unit was deployed to Basra, Iraq, for tour of duty lasting about a year.

The victims of 9/11 and their families have lost much. That day cost the lives of thousands of civilians, firefighters, police officers and military.

Their families and the survivors will never forget it -- never. In the 10 years since, thousands of soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines have been killed, maimed or mentally wounded fighting in two wars.

Thousands of military families have suffered loss, heartache, the stress of deployment, and the stress of a service member returning home, physically or mentally wounded.

After 9/11, I saw hundreds of cars with yellow ribbon stickers -- American flags everywhere. But of all those people who displayed those stickers and flags, those who are not in the military or related to a service member, what has been the cost?

In my company, my platoon, three soldiers were killed during my deployment to Iraq. When I returned, I was depressed, emotionally numb. I did not care about anybody or anything except my soldiers. Anger was my constant companion. I cried all the time, and I drank, a lot.

The cost to me has been:

1) Two years of my life lived in a god-forsaken desert.

2) My job. After my last deployment, I had to retire. I was at my emotional end, and the city offered no help.

3) The incalculable toll of stress and heartache I have caused my family -- both by the deployments and by my erratic behavior when I came home.

4) The mental toll of deployment and loss.

Yet, I would deploy again in a heartbeat if I had the chance. If you have never been in the military, you can't understand why.

But what has it cost you? Would you, as a citizen of this country, go through all that I've written about here?

Or do you just want to fly a flag or display a yellow ribbon and spout patriotic rhetoric?

Seriously think about it: What has 9/11 cost you, personally?

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Robert L. Simon lives in Crystal.