September 11, 2011
Yes, this is yet another blog post about the fact that "9/11" happened ten years ago, but we as a society are nothing if not occasionally redundant.
Under the cut is how I remember things, how I feel about them, and what today is to me. It's not particularly short, but I hope you will read it because they are very important words to me. If you don't, however, I won't blame you at all. It has been hard, being bombarded for a decade with sentimentality and reminiscence, but sometimes genuine growth and understanding can be achieved through those things, and that's what I tried to do for myself with this.
Edited to amend the timeline.
As I write, it is September 11, 2011. At 22 years old, only a couple of months from 23, nearly half of my life has been lived in a post "9/11" America.
I use quotes around that date because, try as I might, I cannot but loathe referring to the event by that name. "9/11" has become so embedded in the political jargon over the last ten years that it leaves a sourness in my mouth. It has been used by anyone casting an emotional fish hook in an endeavor to catch the biggest reaction from the masses for their own progression and gain. And it is itself the subliminal message of panic and helplessness originally intended by evil men - the number to dial for rescue on a over-busy phone line that they have just cut off.
That is why I find it more effective to think of that event by the month and day, "September eleventh." That phrase is not tainted with images and soundbites of politicians and pundits and documentarians and preachers and so many others bending my empathy to their will. It is the day that I came home from school in seventh grade and experienced another defining moment of my generation. It is the day my nation gasped in unison and held itself tight. It is the day when so many people lost and gave so much that I am not sure I can even comprehend the sum of it.
Barely into my second year of middle school, not even two whole months from entering teenager-dom and the magical changes of puberty that would surely begin as soon as that transition came, it was a normal day for me. I can't recall much about the school day, other than overhearing a couple of teachers having what seemed to be a very serious discussion as I passed them on my way to second period. In reply to a sentiment of shocked curiosity that I didn't quite catch from one, the other said, "Everything's grounded." At the time I had no idea what she meant, but it was clearly very serious and just as clearly didn't involve me; they weren't even my teachers, but two grades above mine. Perhaps some eighth grader had done something monumentally stupid, which was not particularly hard to believe. I continued unphased and finished out the school day, which was long due to an extracurricular - cheerleading practice, I think.
The activity bus didn't drop me off at home until after six, and I came in at the back of the house. The cars were both there, which was odd because my father shouldn't have been back from taking a visiting family friend to the airport in D.C. As I walked in I began to call out to my parents that I was home and if Ashley had decided to stay a little longer, and as I turned from the front room into the family room I caught sight of the TV. The very first thing I saw, as my words died on my lips, was the footage of the first plane hitting the World Trade Center. I think I dropped my bookbag, and I'm sure I asked what happened. I looked from my parents to Ashley to my brother who had already gotten home from the high school. Between the adults, they all explained what had happened, who had done it as far as we knew, and that Ashley would be staying a little longer than planned. My brother stayed silent, which was hardly out of character but still somehow disturbing.
I was scared and I hurt for all of the people who were gone and injured and grieving. Except for those feelings and a few specific moments, everything on that day and the following days is hazey now. That teacher's overheard comment, which crystalized in my mind as soon as I knew it for what it was; that moment when I stared past everyone in the room to the television, where I had been culturally taught to look first in a room, to see that ugly, simple collision; crying in my corner of the house, hidden amongst bookshelves and china presses, just as I had when the news of the Columbine shootings had hit two years before; the assembly the next morning, when the school faculty finally acknowledged the attack, explaining their silence the day before as not wanting to panic the students.
I cried all the way through the explanations and the moment of silence. Towards the end my best friend turned to me and asked why I was crying, and I said, "Hundreds of people died. They're dead."
"Yeah, I know," she said. "And it's real sad, but you didn't know any of them. What's the point in crying?"
Three years later we weren't friends anymore, for many other reasons on top of that one.
And after weeks and months and years it all faded, plucked up again every once in a while by anniversaries and election campaigns, novels and movies released with embarrassing quickness. And now it's a decade on and I can barely recall most of that awful day. But it is my JFK was assassinated, my Martin Luther King Jr. was murdered, my the twin towers were destroyed. It is the moment suspended in memory when my country was a nation, together and angry and proud and indomitable.
For now we are a bickering and upsetting country, constantly picking fights and scabs and being generally worrisome in a number of ways. But we are also still those people who came together in fear and camaraderie and did amazing things. We are the same and new at once, and though I may despair of our path from time to time I know that one way or another I will see that amazing nation emerge again, and it will be just as beautiful and inspiring as before.
Today I helped build a set for an incredibly raunchy play at my community theatre, drank too much coffee, rearranged my living room, and laughed with a dearly loved friend over truly epic stories of silliness; and that I may have done all this, on this particular day like any other, is unspeakable in its felicity.
Under the cut is how I remember things, how I feel about them, and what today is to me. It's not particularly short, but I hope you will read it because they are very important words to me. If you don't, however, I won't blame you at all. It has been hard, being bombarded for a decade with sentimentality and reminiscence, but sometimes genuine growth and understanding can be achieved through those things, and that's what I tried to do for myself with this.
Edited to amend the timeline.
As I write, it is September 11, 2011. At 22 years old, only a couple of months from 23, nearly half of my life has been lived in a post "9/11" America.
I use quotes around that date because, try as I might, I cannot but loathe referring to the event by that name. "9/11" has become so embedded in the political jargon over the last ten years that it leaves a sourness in my mouth. It has been used by anyone casting an emotional fish hook in an endeavor to catch the biggest reaction from the masses for their own progression and gain. And it is itself the subliminal message of panic and helplessness originally intended by evil men - the number to dial for rescue on a over-busy phone line that they have just cut off.
That is why I find it more effective to think of that event by the month and day, "September eleventh." That phrase is not tainted with images and soundbites of politicians and pundits and documentarians and preachers and so many others bending my empathy to their will. It is the day that I came home from school in seventh grade and experienced another defining moment of my generation. It is the day my nation gasped in unison and held itself tight. It is the day when so many people lost and gave so much that I am not sure I can even comprehend the sum of it.
Barely into my second year of middle school, not even two whole months from entering teenager-dom and the magical changes of puberty that would surely begin as soon as that transition came, it was a normal day for me. I can't recall much about the school day, other than overhearing a couple of teachers having what seemed to be a very serious discussion as I passed them on my way to second period. In reply to a sentiment of shocked curiosity that I didn't quite catch from one, the other said, "Everything's grounded." At the time I had no idea what she meant, but it was clearly very serious and just as clearly didn't involve me; they weren't even my teachers, but two grades above mine. Perhaps some eighth grader had done something monumentally stupid, which was not particularly hard to believe. I continued unphased and finished out the school day, which was long due to an extracurricular - cheerleading practice, I think.
The activity bus didn't drop me off at home until after six, and I came in at the back of the house. The cars were both there, which was odd because my father shouldn't have been back from taking a visiting family friend to the airport in D.C. As I walked in I began to call out to my parents that I was home and if Ashley had decided to stay a little longer, and as I turned from the front room into the family room I caught sight of the TV. The very first thing I saw, as my words died on my lips, was the footage of the first plane hitting the World Trade Center. I think I dropped my bookbag, and I'm sure I asked what happened. I looked from my parents to Ashley to my brother who had already gotten home from the high school. Between the adults, they all explained what had happened, who had done it as far as we knew, and that Ashley would be staying a little longer than planned. My brother stayed silent, which was hardly out of character but still somehow disturbing.
I was scared and I hurt for all of the people who were gone and injured and grieving. Except for those feelings and a few specific moments, everything on that day and the following days is hazey now. That teacher's overheard comment, which crystalized in my mind as soon as I knew it for what it was; that moment when I stared past everyone in the room to the television, where I had been culturally taught to look first in a room, to see that ugly, simple collision; crying in my corner of the house, hidden amongst bookshelves and china presses, just as I had when the news of the Columbine shootings had hit two years before; the assembly the next morning, when the school faculty finally acknowledged the attack, explaining their silence the day before as not wanting to panic the students.
I cried all the way through the explanations and the moment of silence. Towards the end my best friend turned to me and asked why I was crying, and I said, "Hundreds of people died. They're dead."
"Yeah, I know," she said. "And it's real sad, but you didn't know any of them. What's the point in crying?"
Three years later we weren't friends anymore, for many other reasons on top of that one.
And after weeks and months and years it all faded, plucked up again every once in a while by anniversaries and election campaigns, novels and movies released with embarrassing quickness. And now it's a decade on and I can barely recall most of that awful day. But it is my JFK was assassinated, my Martin Luther King Jr. was murdered, my the twin towers were destroyed. It is the moment suspended in memory when my country was a nation, together and angry and proud and indomitable.
For now we are a bickering and upsetting country, constantly picking fights and scabs and being generally worrisome in a number of ways. But we are also still those people who came together in fear and camaraderie and did amazing things. We are the same and new at once, and though I may despair of our path from time to time I know that one way or another I will see that amazing nation emerge again, and it will be just as beautiful and inspiring as before.
Today I helped build a set for an incredibly raunchy play at my community theatre, drank too much coffee, rearranged my living room, and laughed with a dearly loved friend over truly epic stories of silliness; and that I may have done all this, on this particular day like any other, is unspeakable in its felicity.