Ten years ago today, I was at work listening to the radio when the morning DJ came on and said a plane had flown into one of the towers in New York. I remember he said and I thought how insane that was and something wasn’t adding up. The DJ was going to check his source and I went back to work. Obviously, everything soon became much clearer on a horrifying level.
I worked on a university campus for a useless little nonprofit and was the one to tell my boss what had happened and that the university was under orders to evacuate — I don’t know what list we were on, but someone thought we might be important. I remember he was pissed at me for interrupting his meeting with a few board members and ignored my attempt at a news update. I left soon after, no longer caring what they did.
Back then, I lived just 15 minutes from work. That day, it took 2 hours to get home. You can’t evacuate a campus in the middle of a downtown that’s evacuating too and expect it to go smoothly. I heard stories of people being trapped in parking lots that long because no one would let them out onto the street. I remember thinking I really didn’t want to die while just sitting in my car and had the biggest urge to abandon it and just run home instead.
I cried every day from 11 September until 22 November. I’m not a crier. Wasn’t, anyway, because I am now. But I distinctly remember going to bed on the 22nd and realizing I hadn’t cried that day. Which, of course, made me want to cry but I resisted. I also hadn’t been able to write like I normally did in that time. I kept attempting to imagine the world of my stories and would end up imagining myself inside a tower instead. Who would I have called? What would I have said? What would I have done? I can still go to that place, but it hurts just a bit less now.
And that’s what I want for the future. I want the things that ail us as people and a country to hurt less. Maybe we won’t find a way to fix every single thing that’s wrong, but I’d like to think we could fix some and then learn how to live better with the others. We will never be beloved by every other country, but I’d like to think we could make more of an effort to try and understand them. We will never forget what was done to us, but I hope we can move forward without hate. That’s all I want.
