I'm not one to talk about September 11th. The fact that it's been 10 years is hard to believe. For good or bad, I wasn't the person who jumped in to help the cause. I didn't join the military because I felt it was my duty to serve my country. I don't even think I ran out to buy something red, white, and blue- a flag, a shirt, a pin- to show my support of the country.
I just remember being scared.
I know what our parents and grandparents talk about when they say they know exactly where they were when they heard news about those events. I remember each minute of that day like it was yesterday.
I had an 8am class, so I didn't know anything had happened until I headed to my 2nd class of the day. Looking back on it now, the energy on campus going to that class was much different than any other day. It was almost as if people couldn't speak in complete sentences; there was so much confusion. I made it to my second class before the story really started coming together. Before I knew it, my professor stood in the doorway of the classroom and said, "Leave this room, find a TV, and plant yourself in front of it. You're going to watch history being made." and he left. I went back to my dorm room and watched The Today Show. By that time, Katie Couric and Matt Lauer were sitting on The Today Show couch, speechless for the most part. They were showing replays of the first plane hitting the tower, so you fully understood that originally, this was thought to be some terrible accident that changed in an instant. The planes had also already hit the Pentagon and been taken down in Shanksville. I called Daddy who told me that whatever it was, whoever had done it, it was bad. I watched the coverage in stunned silence, just not knowing what to think. Everything was raw footage, so all the horror, all the scenes that aren't shown anymore because of their graphic nature, weren't edited out.
Not knowing what to do, I went to work at the architecture firm that I worked at all through college. Everyone was watching the news coverage, but it wasn't long before our boss sent us home for the day. The phones weren't ringing, no one was working, and I honestly don't even know if the mail was delivered that day. I went to my parents' house. I just keep thinking that any minute, the death and destruction was going to start up again. I eventually went back out to school, met up with some friends and went to church to pray, then stayed with Jeff that night because again, everything was unknown and if the attacks started again, I certainly didn't want to be by myself.
I couldn't tear myself away from the coverage, which as most will remember, would have been hard to do anyway because all stations- even MTV, ESPN, and the Food Network- were covering. I had early classes everyday and I watched The Today Show as I was getting ready, but for weeks, there was not any sort of structure to the show. They would automatically go into the updates about finding survivors, then remains, then cleaning up the site.
Eventually, despite thinking it never would, life went on and got back to the "new normal." Watching the coverage this morning makes me hold onto Cooper much tighter and maybe having him in my life is what makes this much harder to comprehend. I certainly have cried more about the day now than I ever did when it actually happened. How the families who were directly affected by this tragedy have survived- I will never know.
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