Remembering

For a better part of this year, I've remembered that this year would be 10 years since that awful September morning, but it seemed so far away that I pushed it out of my thoughts. And that worked pretty well until the past few days. With the constant barrage of media coverage of the 10th anniversary came those overwhelming feelings I felt 10 years ago.

10 years ago, I was working at the group home, which was an overnight sleep-in position. My role was to get the kids up for school and on the bus and then my days were free until they got home from school. I was also in grad school at the time, so I had a class on Tuesday mornings which worked out pretty well with my schedule. On that morning, I got the kids off to school and decided to go back to sleep for a little while because my class wasn't until 9:00. I slept a little longer than I planned and had to haul it to get to school. I can't stand listening to talk radio in the morning (still can barely tolerate it today) so I flipped channels trying to find some music. After not being able to find any music, I just left it on the radio and partially tuned it out. I was in front of the campus at UNCC when I vaguely remember hearing the morning show hosts on 95.1 talking about some plane hitting a building. My first instinct was this was local and maybe some had hit the nuclear plant my dad works at or one of the buildings in downtown Charlotte so I panicked. After listening a little more, I realized they were talking about the World Trade Center tower and while I was still sad to hear it happened, I was able to relax a thinking it was just an accident and I didn't know anyone in New York at that time. After I parked and ran my hardest across campus, I get to my classroom to find only 3 other students and no professor. Class had been canceled and I was a little confused as to why, especially after I had broken a sweat running across campus. I started talking to my classmates and they said both towers had been hit by this point and I was shocked. I started to realize this was no accident and I got scared. I left my classroom and headed towards the library to see if what I could find online. When I got to the library, there were 3 or 4 tvs rolled out in the foyer and they were all on various news channels. By this point, the plane had hit the Pentagon and the news channels were throwing out the words terrorist attacks. This could not be happening, I thought. Then, right in front of my eyes, the first tower fell and everyone in the library seemed to loose it. I couldn't wrap my head around how many people had just lost their lives, but I knew it was bad. I decided to leave the library some time after that and just as I was about to leave, the 2nd tower fell. I had never seen those towers in person but instantly the New York skyline looked wrong and I felt hopeless and confused. I was 22-years old and this was the most awful thing I had ever seen in my life. Never before had I worried about my country or my safety in this way.

I went back to the group home and watched more news coverage until the kids got home from school. Another staff member and I talked the kids about what happened and they had so many questions we couldn't answer. I had to go back to school that night for my evening class and my then-boyfriend called while I was in class to tell me that America had started attacking somewhere in Afghanistan. Since I was in school for counseling,  our professor let us just process what had happened that day instead of worrying about our class. Watching the recovery efforts over the following weeks kept the scenes fresh in my mind and made trying to cope even harder. But, as the years went by the feelings softened and I was able to regain some sense of security and acceptance.

I've tried not to watch much of the news coverage over the past 10 years, especially of the towers falling because I remember it too well from the first time. But, today I watched the clips of the 2nd tower being struck and then the towers falling again and I cried. I cried reading the newspaper's commemorative section on 9/11. I cried at 8:46 remembering that first plane. I cried while reading People magazine about children who never met their parent that died that day. I think I cried more today than I did on that day because I understand and know so much more today. It still amazes me that in a few years, I will have to explain these things to my kids when they come home from school asking questions. It makes me wonder if my parents struggled to tell me about President Kennedy being assassinated or the Vietnam War. These were just historical events to me, not part of my life like 9/11. But 9/11 will just be history to my children and I hope to be able to explain it to them in a way that does it justice.