Today is September 11th, 2021 — the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. It was an event which still affects me mentally in some ways, even with my passive experiencing of it and 20 years having passed. As I mentioned in the article yesterday it was a world-changing moment for everyone.
That particular day, however — 9/11/2001 — the actual experience of it for me, that’s something I’ve not yet described. Sure, I’ve told the story of what happened that day and mentioned some of how it felt in an entry for the 15th anniversary of the disaster, but that didn’t paint the whole picture mentally. If you haven’t read that entry, you may want to before this one, since this one relies on knowing the summary my time spent that day.
Indeed it’s hard to write this entry because I’m wanting to place concrete words onto emotions — chemical reactions in the brain which are unique to the individual. Still, I’ll try here.
If you consider the day starting quite normally, what with the chat on the bus and my most hated of classes, Algebra, being 1st period things were quite normal. It was only after we left 1st period that there seemed to be a feeling of something not right. As mentioned previously, faculty weren’t seen in the halls — they were focused on something, and while I recall the faint rumor that something major was happening, I didn’t know what. I don’t think any of us students did at that time, but you could feel that everyone was nervous — things were no longer normal.
I vaguely recall that Biology, another class I didn’t like thanks to the teachers archaic methods of testing (notwithstanding the fact he was, apparently an evolution denier…) felt rather light that day — not light as in jovial, but it felt like the teacher was distracted and thus wasn’t pushing as hard as he normally did.
I still believe that, near the end of class, he hinted to us that planes had crashed in New York City — I can’t recall if it he had said it was a terrorist attack or not, or for sure if he said they had hit major buildings. I would imagine so, however, as when I went to 3rd period I recall being aware, before the TV was finally set up, that the World Trade Center had been damaged or destroyed.
Third period was was where we finally got to focus on the event, rigging up not yet re-mounted on the wall TV set on a desk and tuning in to whatever news we could pick up. Recall this was still in the analog TV days, and these sets were normally used for internal school video — we had no antenna so we did the best we could, getting nothing but a fuzzy image of smoke and what barely looked like a city.
The feeling at that point was one of absolute emptiness — it was a unique feeling I don’t think I’ve ever experienced since that day. Remember, I grew up with strange things happening, but things that felt oddly localized, like Waco, OKC, Columbine… this felt different; it was as if nothing was safe. Aircraft being used to destroy some of the tallest buildings in the world, if that’s where these people started what would they end with?
In many areas, schools let out and businesses closed as a result of the attacks that morning. That wasn’t the case for my high school. We continued to have what class we could, but neither we the students nor the teachers could really focus. In Electronics class, where we traditionally did nothing but play computer games (thanks, Mr. Whitt) I spent my time looking at the CNN webpage and finally being able to clearly see what had happened.
At that point the feeling of emptiness had somewhat waned, only to come and go again in the coming weeks — at that point I began to just take in all of what had happened in the past few hours, and to think more about the fact that I lived at a time where this happened. We all knew this would be a major event in our lives; indeed, in the world, but to think that a war that would spawn from it would end, in failure, just a few weeks shy of 20 years after the event happened, or that we still wouldn’t have some questions answered from it…. well, it wasn’t anything to ponder at that time.
Such was all new to me. Again, I was 16 — what would, or could, I know about world politics? About terrorism? About Afghanistan, the Mujaheddin, Bin Laden… any of that! Nothing much beyond some historic events like Munich and the Lockerbie Scotland bombings. Certainly I did recall the 1993 Trade Center bombing, but beyond that I didn’t know much else on the subject. That would very quickly change in the coming months and years.
I’ve never truly felt “safe” again since that day. That was the event, of all of them, which told me “shit can happen anywhere, at any time, to anyone.” If those beautiful towers, standing tall and strong in such an amazing city as New York could be devastated in 102 minutes, killing thousands of workers inside, well, what else could happen where?
I’m lucky to have had no direct connection to the events of that day… if I felt that bad, and still feel pain from it 20 years later as just a person to have seen it in passing, I can only imagine how those more directly affected feel.
The damage done to a generation is very real, so if you were born too close to, or after the event, to have experienced it just know it really was a most unique feeling of emptiness and vulnerability and that for most of us that feeling never really left.
~Chris
9/11/21
