I was in between classes when my Mom hollered at me to turn on the news.
I had just finished my college class and was home changing before heading to second period at my high school. I was taking particular care in selecting my outfit that morning.
Things were complicated with my boyfriend-ish guy, and while I've never been able to pull off sexy, I wanted to look as cute as possible (while still following dress code).
I didn’t know what to make of what I was watching. It was so completely unheard of I really had no clue.
What do you make of a plane crashing into a building, pre September 11, 2001, that is?
It was a fluke. A horrible accident. A tragedy. But not an attack.
It wasn’t an attack until we watched the second plane hit.
Still unsure how to proceed, I went to school as planned that day.
But my concerns were no longer with whether or not the guy would find me attractive. Instead I spent much of the day in the bathroom, on my purple Nokia phone, begging my mom for updates. For explanations. Even though I knew no one could tell me what I really wanted to know.
Why?
When I woke up this morning, and realized what date it was, I wanted to go back to sleep.
Since I couldn’t do that, I instead opted to bury myself in my work, and escape through television, while fighting back tears at random throughout the day.Watching an episode of #thenewsroom. Taking a shower. Eating fries dipped in honey, and reluctantly watching CNN in the background.
It’s hard for me to forget the feeling of panic I felt that morning. Or the feeling of hopelessness I felt the next day. It’s hard to forget the fear that set in on Septemer 11. Or to get past the kind of fear I now experience when planes fly too low. Or when sitting in a dark movie theater. Or when teenage boys wear trench coats. Or hooded sweatshirts. Or when a news report comes on the radio.
It’s hard to wake up in a world knowing this sort of tragedy happens much more frequently than we acknowledge.
Senseless violence is a hard thing to swallow. And it happens. Every day.
I have less reason than many to be so affected by the tragedy that occurred 11 years ago today. I didn’t know anyone personally that was lost in the attacks. I’m not related to any firemen or police officers or pilots or even businessmen.
Still, it’s hard for me to forget the feeling of panic I felt that morning. Or the feeling of hopelessness I felt the next day.
And I think maybe the reason 9/11, in particular, is so difficult for me personally, even eleven years later, even though my life went back to "normal" much quicker than the people left to clean up the rubble in the streets of New York… is because, cheesy as it sounds, I lost a part of myself that day.
My innocence, my naivety, they were brought down with that second tower.
The world hasn't looked the same since that morning, the one that started like so many others.
I went to bed September 10, 2001 a different person than I was when I struggled to sleep the next night.
I went from worrying about boys and school assignments to wondering if the end of the world was beginning, if I’d live to experience my first kiss, or have kids before a worldwide catastrophe would launch us into an apocalyptic future.
I went from the self-centered thinking characteristic of adolescence, to needing to grow up very quickly.
To see beyond the small world I was living in, and look at the global picture.
9/11 made me a different person.
How could it not make all of us different?
Several years ago a few friends and I went to The Sixth Floor Museum in Dallas. It's located in Dealey Plaza, in the very building from which John F. Kennedy was assasinated.
There are cardboard boxes surrounding the window where the shots were fired, and memorabilia in the gift store with Kennedy’s iconic image emblazoned on it.
The museum has several moving displays, including video footage from that day. But what stirred me more than anything else, were the simple books near the exits. They were filled with blank pages where guests could leave notes.
I was enthralled as I read story after story of men and women explaining where they were when they first heard the news.
They were in class rooms, they were on buses, they were sitting in doctor’s offices and strolling the aisles at grocery stores. They were ordinary men and women (many were children at the time) doing the sort of normal, everyday things that we all do.
Only that day, they happened to get crushing news, news that changed them forever.
These people took time to bring life to a page in our history books. Because they penned their stories - personal, real and raw - somehow these ordinary people’s ordinary days became important, in the big scheme of things. Because they added flesh to the stuff of movies. Sound blurbs. Conspiracy theories.
They made it impossible not to empathize with them, impossible not to share in their shock, and grief, and horror and disillusionment.
The human condition is a strange thing.
We can look on each other in judgment. Disapproval. Hatred. Anger. Pity. Envy.
It’s so easy to pick out our differences. To focus on what sets us apart from one another.
Skin tones. Ages. Life experiences. Political views.
But at our core, we are the same, you and I.
We are all capable of unspeakable evil. Yet, capable of greatness, and heroism, and moral decency too.
We are flesh and bones. Blood, sweat and tears. All made in God’s image, unfathomable as that is. And all designed with an innate desire for relationship. For community. To feel like we’re not alone, particularly in a world gone mad.
My story is not special. My inability to understand 9/11, or the affect its anniversary still has on me, is not unique.
And yet, I feel compelled to tell it to you now. Not because you need to know I was at home, worried about a boy, when I saw that plane crash into the World Trade Center.
But because you need to hear you’re not alone, even in this world gone mad.
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