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In the week following 9/11, I wrote an essay about how America was facing a choice. By that time, I was already publishing essays and mostly had no problem getting published. So I wanted to have a compassionate voice be heard.

I wrote that we have a choice. We could continue on the course it seemed to be on, or we could choose compassion, understanding, and an acknowledgement that such actions do not happen in a vacuum and that America, also, has debts to pay. I wrote about how America could chose aggression and animosity, or we could chose love, compassion, understanding.

I could not get anyone to accept my essay, even places that accepted anything I wrote immediately turned it down. Some responses even called me out as anti-patriotic. In fact, I got kind of shadow blacklisted.

That's all I think about when 9/11 comes around every year. I will #NeverForget that America had a chance to choose peace and reconciliation, and instead chose hatred and war.