All news reports have been 9/11 focused the last week, I have to be honest and say that it in conjunction with working from home (has it's pros and con's) has not helped my emotional levels and anxiety issues. We have watched documentaries and been bombarded with news reports of the possibility of yet another attack. I didn't personally know anyone that died that day, but i knew the fear that many felt, the confusion and the disillusion of what the World was becoming.
It happened my senior year of high school... year 12... or the last year of high school/ college for all of my non-American friends. I was in computer class, doing my work without a clue of what was happening in the outside world. We were all scheduled to attend an assembly in the gymnasium in honor of one of our teachers... Mr. Collins, he was being honored as teacher of the year for the state I believe, or something similar. As we made our way to the doors, a few friends ran up informing me that the world was ending, the world as we knew it, they told of the crashes and the terror and the fear... though I am not sure it had fully sunk in. We went through the assembly, obviously a bit different as the teachers had a responsibility of dealing with hundreds of kids and our questions, concerns and issues. I then headed to college English with Mrs. Davila, we sat on our desks that were tables and stared in unison at the television as long as was possible, the same scenes over and over, the planes flying into the buildings... the terror on the faces of those fleeing the building, the security that was going into effect around the rest of the country. Tara, my best friend growing up, we realized was wearing a shirt that day, it read New York on it and had the skyline in the background, the twin towers standing tall and proud.
I left school that day to meet up with a friend, Gay Bates, to go to dinner and shopping. We kept with our plans, not really knowing what else to do. But when we got to the shops, half of them had closed down, the restaurant we ate at had the news blasting on every television. I stopped on the way home behind the lines of people to get gas, as the nation was unsure of what would become of our fuel supply, of everything. And I got news that my dad's work was under careful surveillance, the nuclear power plant was enforcing a no fly zone over their premises and they were under ultra high security.
That is all I really remember about it, I think I mentally removed myself from the rest of it, wouldn't let it really sink in or really deal with the fear it caused me to have.
For a final project in that college English course we did a copulation of our own writings, there were several titles we were given to walk us through our lives. We had the leisure to change them if we felt like they didn't relate to us. I don't remember what the topic had been, but I remember making it into "where was I when my world stopped turning" It had stories of friends parent's passing away, a friend of mine dying, Princess Diana dying, 9/11, and Columbine. Since then, there have been many other stories that could be added to this chapter, all playing a huge part of my life, and the more I come to understand myself, the more I realize that I have not dealt with so many of them to the extent they deserved, or that my heart has needed.
I hope that as tomorrow comes and goes, the world stays calm, remembers and takes time to realize how blessed we all are, how much we take for grated and to stop and truly enjoy life and what we have!
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