Memories of 9/11
Sep. 11th, 2008 04:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
unforthReading other peoples comments today, I flipped back through my LJ and discovered that I've never actually written up my thoughts on this topic. So why not?
I grew up in New York City. Looking back, I remember always having an awareness of the fact that because we were a big city, we were in more danger than other people, and that if anything ever caused a war to start, we would be a target. When I was very young, this danger was from the Soviet Union, but I was just a little kid, an didn't understand that Cold War. Then, in the early 90's, the danger was from Saddam, and I remember distinctly a time when there was talk about what an Anthrax attack was like, and I thought to myself that if anyone ever actually did that, we would all die, it was too hard to get off the island of Manhattan, and even if one could, my mom didn't have a car, and certainly I was totally screwed. I remember picturing the streets empty, the bridges out of New York clogged with abandoned cars, very summer blockbuster-esque.
The 90's saw some of our fears come to fruition. After the attack on the World Trade Centers when I was in 5th grade (I wrote a bunch of current events articles about that which I still have!), and - much more upsetting to me just because of it's scope! - the attack in Oklahoma City, I thought that I knew what terrorism was. I went to high school, graduated, and left for college, moving upstate to Binghamton in 2000.
My sophomore year of college just starting, and I was acting like any lazy college student, sleeping in, paying no attention to the news, living in my own bubble. Which is why I didn't find out that anything was different about 9-11-01 until I arrived on campus at 10:30 AM and walked into the dining hall to grab breakfast, and noticed that the radio was on, and it wasn't playing oldies.
"...and some students have to be able to reach their parents."
Say what?
I hated talking to strangers, but this was enough to prompt me to ask some random kid what had happened.
"You mean you don't know?" clearly, this made me an alien. "The World Trade Centers have fallen over."
The image in my mind that this statement conjured up was truly horrifying. Dear god, they've destroyed lower Manhattan...
Breakfast in one hand, cell phone in the other, I called my mom, and found out what had really happened. She was badly shaken - she'd been headed out to a meeting at Union Square when the news first hit, and now she had me on one phone, my uncle in Texas on the other, one at each ear, trying to talk to both of us. I was one of the lucky ones - not long after my call, the cell networks went down all over the north east because they were too taxed. I tried not to think about my friends and teachers who traveled through that train station every day on the way to school - for my high school was only a few blocks away from the centers. Indeed, I later learned that they used the school as a triage center for the next week.
The hardest part about the day itself was telling people. Two of my friends -![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
fireun and bakanekotoo - didn't know about the attack until I told them. I had just gotten off the phone my then boy friend who was very afraid that he was breaking the news to me, having just found out himself when he got to work, when I got to class. There was a girl outside of the room who was crying, and looking at her, I started to cry too, and the two of us held each other and cried - we'd never met, we'd never spoken, I've never encountered her again.
For me, there was no sense that we had to preserve the peace. I walked around in pain, wishing I could come to NYC and help with the clean up, whispering to myself over and over again, "what did they do to my city?" New York is a part of my blood, a part of my being, a part of who I am, and I cried with her those days. I wanted vengeance, I wanted to make those sons of bitches pay, personally if need be. I remember having the realization that if there was a draft, that meant my brother and boy friend would be sent to war, and while it made me sad, I was rather okay with it. I was almost ready to go myself. I learned that day something I had never known - that I am a patriot. It's odd, looking back, to think that I never knew before than that I loved my country. It's not a feeling I've ever lost.
I passed an anti-war protest on the 13th, the first day classes resumed after the attack, and one woman accosted me, and I was so mad at her suggestion that we not fight back that I yelled at her.
I defend this view to this day. I believe that we were right to attack the Taliban, and to hunt for Osama bin Laden. I felt the wound of 9/11 like a sore on my soul. For two years after the attacks, I could feel that New York wasn't the same, the people were quieter, and they looked at the skies with nervous glances. It was two years before I could compel myself to go to Ground Zero, to force myself to think of something other than the Centers on that spot - I'd been to the observation deck, I'd hung out at the Borders, I'd gone shopping at the mall, I'd had to get off the train there that one time I fell asleep on the train and missed my stop. Not until Jury Duty forced me to down town did I go and take a look for myself.
And what about now? I'm still startled every time I see the skyline and the towers aren't there. Thinking about what was lost that day - for myself, for my city, for my country, and for the world, in terms of personal loss (no one I knew was killed, but at least 3 friends of friends passed away), in terms of the radicalization of the country, the war in Iraq - which I don't support and never really have - and our declining image in the international eye - I reflect back on all of it and it brings tears to my eyes. New York has recovered, and the wound has healed, but the damage has been done - the world will never be the same.
The direction the country has taken in the years since then frankly scares the shit out of me. As a patriot, I stand by my political views as a democrat and a liberal, if a considerably more conservative, weird kind of liberal than my friends. I support Obama fervently, and I fear what will happen if McCain wins. I'm not much of a dissident, but if McCain wins this election, and the Democrats don't have a 2/3 majority in Congress, I will make my voice heard, precisely because I believe in this country and what it stands for, and I believe in stopping those who dare to attack us, but I also believe in democracy, and free speech, and the inalienable rights of us all.
I grew up in New York City. Looking back, I remember always having an awareness of the fact that because we were a big city, we were in more danger than other people, and that if anything ever caused a war to start, we would be a target. When I was very young, this danger was from the Soviet Union, but I was just a little kid, an didn't understand that Cold War. Then, in the early 90's, the danger was from Saddam, and I remember distinctly a time when there was talk about what an Anthrax attack was like, and I thought to myself that if anyone ever actually did that, we would all die, it was too hard to get off the island of Manhattan, and even if one could, my mom didn't have a car, and certainly I was totally screwed. I remember picturing the streets empty, the bridges out of New York clogged with abandoned cars, very summer blockbuster-esque.
The 90's saw some of our fears come to fruition. After the attack on the World Trade Centers when I was in 5th grade (I wrote a bunch of current events articles about that which I still have!), and - much more upsetting to me just because of it's scope! - the attack in Oklahoma City, I thought that I knew what terrorism was. I went to high school, graduated, and left for college, moving upstate to Binghamton in 2000.
My sophomore year of college just starting, and I was acting like any lazy college student, sleeping in, paying no attention to the news, living in my own bubble. Which is why I didn't find out that anything was different about 9-11-01 until I arrived on campus at 10:30 AM and walked into the dining hall to grab breakfast, and noticed that the radio was on, and it wasn't playing oldies.
"...and some students have to be able to reach their parents."
Say what?
I hated talking to strangers, but this was enough to prompt me to ask some random kid what had happened.
"You mean you don't know?" clearly, this made me an alien. "The World Trade Centers have fallen over."
The image in my mind that this statement conjured up was truly horrifying. Dear god, they've destroyed lower Manhattan...
Breakfast in one hand, cell phone in the other, I called my mom, and found out what had really happened. She was badly shaken - she'd been headed out to a meeting at Union Square when the news first hit, and now she had me on one phone, my uncle in Texas on the other, one at each ear, trying to talk to both of us. I was one of the lucky ones - not long after my call, the cell networks went down all over the north east because they were too taxed. I tried not to think about my friends and teachers who traveled through that train station every day on the way to school - for my high school was only a few blocks away from the centers. Indeed, I later learned that they used the school as a triage center for the next week.
The hardest part about the day itself was telling people. Two of my friends -
fireun and bakanekotoo - didn't know about the attack until I told them. I had just gotten off the phone my then boy friend who was very afraid that he was breaking the news to me, having just found out himself when he got to work, when I got to class. There was a girl outside of the room who was crying, and looking at her, I started to cry too, and the two of us held each other and cried - we'd never met, we'd never spoken, I've never encountered her again. For me, there was no sense that we had to preserve the peace. I walked around in pain, wishing I could come to NYC and help with the clean up, whispering to myself over and over again, "what did they do to my city?" New York is a part of my blood, a part of my being, a part of who I am, and I cried with her those days. I wanted vengeance, I wanted to make those sons of bitches pay, personally if need be. I remember having the realization that if there was a draft, that meant my brother and boy friend would be sent to war, and while it made me sad, I was rather okay with it. I was almost ready to go myself. I learned that day something I had never known - that I am a patriot. It's odd, looking back, to think that I never knew before than that I loved my country. It's not a feeling I've ever lost.
I passed an anti-war protest on the 13th, the first day classes resumed after the attack, and one woman accosted me, and I was so mad at her suggestion that we not fight back that I yelled at her.
I defend this view to this day. I believe that we were right to attack the Taliban, and to hunt for Osama bin Laden. I felt the wound of 9/11 like a sore on my soul. For two years after the attacks, I could feel that New York wasn't the same, the people were quieter, and they looked at the skies with nervous glances. It was two years before I could compel myself to go to Ground Zero, to force myself to think of something other than the Centers on that spot - I'd been to the observation deck, I'd hung out at the Borders, I'd gone shopping at the mall, I'd had to get off the train there that one time I fell asleep on the train and missed my stop. Not until Jury Duty forced me to down town did I go and take a look for myself.
And what about now? I'm still startled every time I see the skyline and the towers aren't there. Thinking about what was lost that day - for myself, for my city, for my country, and for the world, in terms of personal loss (no one I knew was killed, but at least 3 friends of friends passed away), in terms of the radicalization of the country, the war in Iraq - which I don't support and never really have - and our declining image in the international eye - I reflect back on all of it and it brings tears to my eyes. New York has recovered, and the wound has healed, but the damage has been done - the world will never be the same.
The direction the country has taken in the years since then frankly scares the shit out of me. As a patriot, I stand by my political views as a democrat and a liberal, if a considerably more conservative, weird kind of liberal than my friends. I support Obama fervently, and I fear what will happen if McCain wins. I'm not much of a dissident, but if McCain wins this election, and the Democrats don't have a 2/3 majority in Congress, I will make my voice heard, precisely because I believe in this country and what it stands for, and I believe in stopping those who dare to attack us, but I also believe in democracy, and free speech, and the inalienable rights of us all.
