9/11 was such a weird day. Understatement of the century, I know, but it was the last day of our innocence. I was 20 years old and I never watched the news in the morning. As far as maturity goes, I wasn’t quite there yet. I was a junior at the University of Texas and I went to class that day like every other day. I first heard the news in my 10am Hindi class when a classmate told me that some terrorists has bombed the World Trade Center.
“Again?” I thought. Our professor corrected us and told us that two planes were flown into the towers. Our professor, a fervent Hindu nationalist, also had to add “I’m sure it was the Muslims.” We disregarded this last comment because we were still in shock from the previous one.
We still went about class as though it were a normal Tuesday. The classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays are longer, so we didn’t get out until almost noon. That’s when we found a mass exodus from campus. No one wanted to be away from home when we weren’t really sure what was going on. I got back without event and went into the apartment I shared with two of my girlfriends from high school. I said hi to them and went to my room. It was common for me to come home and immediately change into crummy loungewear. I closed my bedroom door, sat on the bed, took a deep breath and turned on the TV. It was 1 or 2 o’clock before I got a chance to see the news coverage for the first time. I saw the footage of the first and second planes deliberately smash into the towers. I just burst into tears, sobbing quietly in my room alone. My roommate Sunanda knocked on my door. I knew it was her because of the three of us, she was always the first one to reach out. I tried to wipe my face dry before opening the door, but it was no use.
“How long are you going to do this alone before we can do this together?” she asked. In the worst moment in our country’s history, she knew exactly what to do – stick together. That afternoon, that evening and the next few days, we were glued to the 24-hour news coverage of what was happening around the world. We watched Peter Jennings try to eat a quick snack in between reports. We watched people on the other side of the world celebrating in the streets with AK-47s. We saw Jon Stewart break down in tears. Our Mexican-American neighbors asked us if we were American and if we were Muslims. On my mom’s insistence, I taped an American flag in the back window of my car so people would know that although I am brown, I’m also American.
9/11 changed everything. You could not drive your car near the capitol building for the State of Texas anymore. You could not fly without being molested and dehumanized at the airport. You could not just be American, you had to constantly prove that you were the right kind of American. The University was always on Orange Alert for terror. People started assigning themselves more importance than what they needed, assuming that they would be Osama Bin Ladin’s next target. “Well the president’s daughter goes to UT and she’s in a sorority in West Campus and I live in West Campus so, you just can’t be too sure…”
24-hour news became the norm along with the constantly running ticker on the bottom of the screen. Last month’s DC quake-i-cane coverage made me miss the days when not everything was big news. 9/11 was and still is, big news. Baby earthquakes and the like used to just interrupt the regularly scheduled programming for 5 minutes and then let us get back to it. So when will we ever really get back to it?
4 months ago, we learned that Osama Bin Ladin was shot and killed by Navy Seals. The most surprising part was that he was found in Pakistan living a life of leisure for the last 10 years. Meanwhile, we’ve been living life measured in 3.5-ounce bottles, sealed in a plastic zip-top bag with no shoes on and our laptops in a separate bin. His death felt me puzzled about how to appropriately react. Obviously, the 20-year-old drunken kids partying outside the White House had the wrong idea. There are 5 stages of grief. I don’t think I felt any of them for Osama. Here’s a short run down of what I felt:
Shock – we were still looking for him?
Surprise – we actually killed him? His dialysis didn’t fail him years ago?
Anger – wait, he was living a life of leisure for the last 10 years? Asshole. (anger actually is one of the 5 stages of grief, my bad)
Happiness – not for his death, but for the .00001% chance that we can return to the years of pre 9/11 flying where it’s okay to be brown-skinned and to have shampoo or your own water from home that didn’t cost $7.50.
Relief – Whew. This is finally over. Wait, hasn’t it been over for years?
Confusion – So what does this really mean for us now?
Anxiety – what now? Is anyone actually upset over his death? Does it change anything for terrorists?
My husband and I were in a bar in Rhode Island after going to a concert when we found out the news. I checked facebook and saw 20+ people had the same status in a row and then I had to check the real news. We asked the bartender and she changed the channel from baseball to the news. The only other people in the bar were two 21-year-old guys. They were very excited to hear this news. They said they had been taken out of class for an assembly when they were in 6th grade to hear about what had happened that horrible Tuesday morning. 6th grade? That will make you feel old. The big assembly I remember from middle school was the one where OJ’s verdict was read aloud by a stammering juror that I mentioned last post.
I still can’t watch the footage of the planes crashing into the towers without crying. It’s rare to even see it on TV anymore. It awakens something so visceral and so human inside of you. And the footage of the towers crumbling and collapsing. I feel like the towers collapse on my chest and push all of the air out of my lungs every time I see it. I think about those rescue workers running in when everyone else was running out. I think of the rescue crews that came to rescue the trapped first responders. I think about how they have been treated since. I think of the war that so many young men and women die for while we forget and move on to reality TV and boutique cupcakes. All of that makes me want to cry again. Who are we and where have we come? Did we use the events of 9/11 to repurpose our lived successfully? Maybe you have, but I haven’t. I can be honest about that. Maybe I tried, maybe I would have, I don’t know, and I really can’t remember. All I can remember is that my towers collapsed again in 2003 when Sunanda died.
9/12, the day after the day that changed us forever. What now? This is our chance to begin anew. This time I’m going to do it right. How about you?
