Speechless. I think for the past 20 years that is where most of us have stayed. Every year, another anniversary of 9/11, another year realizing we are still in a war over it and another year realizing that moment in history forever changed us. Not just as individuals, but as a country as well. I think for so many of us the only way to know how to continue to process is to talk about where we were when we found out about the twin towers and ask others the details they remember of that day. After 20 years, I’m not sure I’ve fully processed things, but I think after 20 years it is time to try.
I remember I was living in Anniston, Alabama, I was slowly walking into the living room as I was just waking up for the day to eat breakfast and start my homeschooling. I walked into the living room where we had navy wall paper, maroon crown molding and this ugly boxy coach with tan velvet and dark brown 70’s style squares we had covered up with a navy couch cover. I remember seeing my family looking at the tv as I went and sat on that little couch. My cousins were over at our house and as I’m yawning watching the tv with them I don’t fully understand what’s going on. When my mom explained that planes crashed into the world trade center, I knew that had to be bad but I still didn’t quite understand. I was barely 10 years old, so I was old enough to know it was bad news but not old enough to really understand the magnitude of this.
As we continued to watch the news I remembered George W. Bush addressing the nation, and addressing that we would be going to war. To a 10 year old war is not something that could possibly be happening. It was in the history books, my American Girl books, in the days of my great grandparents who served but not something my generation would experience and see. As I’m sitting there processing everything, as my family is processing everything..we get a knock on the door from a police officer. He explains that there is a bomb threat on an Amtrak train that is on a route that will be passing through the railroad tracks right behind our house and our neighborhood needed to evacuate. So here I am 10 years old processing what a terrorist attack is, the country I live in going to war, and now we have to leave our “safe space”, our home because of a bomb threat. I knew at 10 years old there was evil in the world however, it was not until 9/11 I realized how deeply evil this world could be.
So we couldn’t be home, and no public place felt safe. So many bomb threats in the world, all the hijackings, we really had no place to go. So we drove, and we drove, and we drove and ended up in Georgia. I remember while we were driving around aimlessly genuinely thinking that was the day we were going to die. That a plane was going to crash into the road we were on, or that a terrorist attack would occur in the south and we would be caught in the middle of it. I was 100% convinced I was not going to see the next day and I don’t think I really told my family about the things I was feeling. I had experienced fear in the past but this was the first time I had felt real, intense fear.
I remember at the age of 10 being scared that nobody will ever want to be a police officer or a fireman or an EMT or join the military again. Who would want to be a first responder and have to potentially experience such a traumatic event? How would anyone in their right mind WILLINGLY sign up to join a military that is actively at war knowing they will have to go overseas? I was so scared about the what ifs, that this moment would result in people no longer wanting to sign up for these jobs and as a result we would have no protection, nobody to help keep us safe and that if nobody joined the military the war would escalate and terrorists would run our country. At 10 years old, this was all a lot to process.
Sometimes I think 9/11 was the beginning of my anxiety problems, my need to control everything, my uneasiness in big crowds and maybe even a little bit about my mild fear of heights. If I can control everything, I don’t have to experience fear or uncertainty, everything around me is safe and I can feel comfort. If I avoid big crowds I don’t need to have a narrative in the back of my mind thinking this would be the perfect opportunity for another terrorist to attack our country, I don’t have to worry that at any moment someone could come in and blow the whole place up. If I stay close to the ground I don’t have to worry about trying to get out of a collapsing building or be trapped in an elevator as tragedy is about to occur. If people like me who just watched it on tv have these lingering thoughts, and fears..can you imagine the people who had to actually live through it or witness it in person?
I read something today about an individual whose picture has circulated so much her photo is known as “dust lady”. It mentioned that even though she survived the terrorist attack, essentially she lost her life that day. This individual understandably developed PTSD, regularly had nightmares Bin Laden was hunting her down, flashbacks of the event and she began to self medicate with alcohol and drugs. The photo also said that it was not until she learned Bin Laden was killed that she entered rehab and got clean, finally living a somewhat normal life, until she died of cancer in 2015. They said the cancer was most likely due to what she inhaled on 9/11. Can you imagine living through what happened, living through calling your loved ones on the airplane or being in the surrounding buildings watching the plane knowing it’s going to crash and you can’t do anything about it. I think we need to remember the survivors of 9/11, the people who experienced a literal hell on earth and have to sort through that for the rest of their lives. So often I feel they are forgotten, it’s not to discredit the physical lives that were lost but they did lose life as they knew it that day.
The days that followed 9/11 are also something I’ll never forget. I remember we couldn’t find American flags anywhere, I remember strangers helping strangers, people talking to each one another randomly in public (now I lived in the south so when I say this I mean more than usual). It was like America as a whole exemplified what it means to come together and unify after a tragedy. When we could have been scared of strangers we were befriending them and helping them. When we saw people hurting, we were helping them. We were showing our support for our country, our first responders and truly understood what it meant to be united. I think so many of us feel incredibly blessed to have lived through that specific aftermath of 9/11. We weren’t fighting over red and blue, we weren’t fighting about war or police brutality or what the leader that didn’t get elected would have done. Instead we came together as a country, we leaned on each other, and we were ready to do what we needed to do to help our country and our people. I honestly don’t think we will ever see that type of unity again, but I am so thankful I got to experience that. It has shaped me and my political beliefs a lot as an adult.
20 years remembering 9/11 and I am proud to say those fears of that 10 year old little girl have been diminished. I have been so blessed to have so many friends and family fill those roles I thought nobody would want to fill. To see people take what occurred on 9/11 and say “this day was the day I was called to serve my country”. To see people continue to enlist when there has been a war going on for 2/3rds of my life. I will always love and appreciate the heroes I personally know in my life, especially knowing they chose to fill these roles even though they watched 9/11 occur on their tv’s just like I did. To have firefighters, soldiers, EMTs and police officers in my life is truly an honor. These friends and family members will never really know how much I look up to them.
20 years. 20 years to process. 20 years of still being speechless. 20 years of still trying to move past this. May we never forget the event that occurred, the lives that were lost, the first responders, the survivors and the importance of united we stand.
Taia Jo 