I have experienced so many different emotions in the last two weeks that I can hardly remember them all. From fear to shock to horror to anger to sadness – the emotional roller coaster I have been on would rival anything that Six Flags Great Adventure has to offer. But despite the range of emotions that I have experienced and the traumatic events that I have been through in the last three and a half weeks – I have yet to cry.

Needless to say, the things I have been through in the last twenty-four days are no doubt things that would make anyone cry. In fact, my mom has cried because she is upset about the attacks and the loss of life, Christine has cried because she is worried about me, my friends have cried due to losing Doug, my co-workers cried when the towers fell – and I have even made reporters cry at Yankee Stadium when I told them about Doug. But for some reason – I myself cannot cry a single tear.

It’s not that I don’t want to cry – because I think that releasing all of that emotion would really help me deal with the horrors that have surrounded me these past few weeks – it’s just that I can’t. I have seen some things that would make anyone cry. In fact, just the pictures I took of Ground Zero made my friend Doris at work cry when I showed them to her. And besides what I have seen at Ground Zero – I witnessed the disaster, I saw people jumping out of windows, I had to run away from Tower #2 as it was collapsing, I watched Tower #1 collapse, I lost my best friend – and I have been living and breathing this disaster every day since it happened as a City official. And yet – no tears have flowed from my eyes.

Maybe I haven’t cried because I am so immersed in the investigation, rescue and recovery that I am too close to it to feel anything. Maybe I can’t cry because I have yet to absorb the fact that America was attacked, the Twin Towers were destroyed – and my best friend’s wife is now a twenty-eight year old widow. Maybe I have yet to cry because I refuse to believe it – or maybe I am just waiting to wake up and find out that all of this was just a very bad dream – but whatever the reason for my lack of tears – my eyes are dry – although I have oceans of tears inside of me just waiting to flow – if they ever do.