When Nothing Makes Sense and You Can't Look Away

There's a lot more to this topic that I haven't been able to coalesce into a comprehensible writing just yet, so this could very well be only half or a third of what it may become one day. Most of what remains is exactly how the day influenced the next nine years of my life (world outlook, political feelings, educational priorites, etc). However, I've been able to dig into my memories of September 11th, and put this piece together.

Two towers soon to fall.

Silvery grey twins shimmering bright in morning’s light, dealt matching blows, left with fatal haunting holes. Millions of hands covered as many mouths but no one shielded their eyes. The City that Never Sleeps left silent in sunlight. Speechless, at a standstill, the sudden strikes start a citywide shock. Replays of planes, passengered projectiles, colliding into these, these steel giants, shock my senses. Only eleven, I’m watching death live on television.

Six-hundred miles off, my teacher’s cowering, cornered with her phone; with silent streaming tears, metronomic sniffles, she’s shook by the scene, trying and trying to call her friend who lives in New York City. She leaves voicemails to no avail, hoping it’s not goodbye.

Tongue-tied by it all, the anchors sit in awe. The cameras just roll. Grotesque plumes rise high, grow grey, and mix with sky’s blue. They don’t die for dozens of days; they hang without fade, weeks ‘til they dissipate. Meanwhile, men fall fast to seal their fate. Chuteless skydivers descending at terminal velocity to the city streets while cameras record without skipping a beat. It all feels wrong; I can’t comprehend the terror of two towers smoldering in ruin, but still standing. Common knowledge suggests two severed spines cannot stand long. I’m not alone in this, my social studies class is a confused mess; the horror before them is too abstract. For developing minds, the impact of this attack will come later, creep in, seep into them in time, when wives, widows, the like, morn the lost lives on nightly newscasts for months on end. When the final figure hits 2,976, they’ll finally feel fear.

North and South, brother buildings; architectural wonders of simple design, built to shine and stand as the symbol of Us, came down.

Twin births, twin deaths, only half-an-hour apart. Our monstrous monoliths, our powerful pillars of financial mastery and might, came down.

Those dual representatives of our will, our fight, assembled as means to say that capitalism is right, came down.

Those sterling structures, they fell for years.

Cameramen fled on foot amid citizens’ repetitions of Oh my God. Perfect collapses into Lower Manhattan happened and the people ran like Pamplona. The pursuing plume hid the bulls.

A school-bell rang six-hundred miles away telling me to pack up. Third-hour awaits. I didn’t see a minute more the rest of the day.

For two years after, I was stoically phobic and suffered private fits of fear; occurring whenever I would be outside and the whistles of robins or the breeze of midday would swim by, a foreboding thunder of whirring mechanics interrupted, roaring many miles high. I’d become dumbstruck, Staring at sky. My attention would snap, priorities would swap, and in an instant, my neck would crane, eyes looking up. I’d see another in the making: A terror attack, a nightmare from which there is no awaking.

In a second of precise, precocious estimation I could measure altitude, direction, and just how much the engines made me shake, all to quell my fright that this American Airliner above was nothing to fear, just a typical flight. Every plane that passed by made me hold my breath and hope, made me think of those that’d died, ‘til it flew out of sight. If one flew too close, I’d run inside fast, check online news sites looking for breaking news of: More hijacked aircrafts. That habit hasn’t left me, The panic’s never fled. I’m still attune to low-flyers and the resultant nagging dread.

Only eleven, I saw mass murder unfolding unedited on TV, and I credit it to molding the present me. That Tuesday morning, I was a sixth-grader watching something hard to come to grips with. There are things I would not grasp until well into my teens: The totality of that terrorism, the loss of those lives, and how the news could mimic a bad dream. Now, however, I hold close to that memory, that day, and without fail, when pressed to recall all those scenes and sounds I keep vaulted so tight in my mind’s walls, I can’t help but cry. I feel the shivering grief, every ounce at once, raining down relentlessly like the bodies and debris from those two towers. I feel the loss of 3,000 in a rousing bout of synchronized sadness.

The formative morning in my budding life, the motivation of my growth, why I’ve developed into this self, has its roots in shared tragedy. Given the paralyzing pain, the cynicism it created, the heartbreak it brings, I hope it’s understandable, and that it’s no real wonder, why it took ten years to talk of this.