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It took 19 years...
5 years ago
I was just browsing imgur... it's a bad habit, but I was bored and still pondering over what to do because I'm still awake and probably shouldn't be. It hadn't really even registered when I started browsing through the next post what day it was, that there was a reason I was seeing this now. Just this little collection of images and things related to the event... and as I went down, I reached a video clip, so I unmuted it, and I watched. Normal people conducting daily business in their daily lives. The sound of a plane overhead in the city. They look up, they follow it, they pan the camera down the street to the buildings. Something hits. Boom. A massive fireball flares across the sky.
I've seen all of this before. It's nothing new. I've always been numb to it. Jaded. Cynical. Maybe it's the times we're in. Maybe it's because I'm more tired than I realized. Maybe its a lot of things...
But all of a sudden it all just hit me. Harder than it's ever hit me before. And I was crying and I was overcome and it was all just flooding back.
....I've never cried over it before.
The day it happened, class was about to change over to the second stop of the day. The basketball coach who taught our lousy-ass economics class was wheeling one of the carts with the tv on it into the center of the room, plugging it in, getting it turned on. That was new. The images of two buildings come up on screen, one looks like it's on fire? The bell rings, people are leaving the room to go to their next destination. A plane hits the building.
I laughed.
I always worry that will bother people when I say it. Hindsight 20/20 and all that. But it was hilarious. I'd never seen something so stupid actually happen before. I was a kid in my first or second year of high school. I didn't know yet there were actual people on the plane. In the building. I watched Power Rangers and shit all the time. Monsters and robots flew into buildings and exploded them constantly with no consequence. I hadn't made the real connections yet. I walked down the hall, laughing, "Some idiot flew a plane into a building." We got called out of normal classes and went to the auditorium to the teachers and the principal could tell us all about the fucking magazine sale drive we were gonna be doing that year for the school fundraiser... which was just a stupid thing we had to do. Maybe we'd win some dumb prizes, but probably not... Now I'm thinking about how we had to do that because the school was underfunded... this is how they tried to make ends meet. My god. It's always been like this. What a shitshow. But I sat there, as the world turned, next to my best friend and we joked. We made Wiley Coyote references and mocked holding up a tiny umbrella as an imaginary ceiling collapsed on us, because "Sir, there's a plane coming at us and there's nothing we can do!" Lol.
We were children.
Time passed by. My parents were out of town, away on one of my dad's work meetings in Los Angles. They'd been treating it like a vacation. My grandparents were babysitting my sister and me. Suddenly we didn't know if they'd be able to come home because all the planes had been grounded and we didn't know when they'd start up again. A day later I was having a personal crisis over a damned art project that was due and the teacher had misled me on the rules and everything was fucked. Everything I'd planned for the whole semester was ruined. And the people I'd have counted on to comfort me were thousands of miles away. Those tiny little things were more important than anything else. That was my world. Everything else was just something that was happening. It didn't effect me. We moved on. The world got worse, but my bubble never changed. Everything kept moving like nothing had happened until it seemed like everything was back on track.
Maybe it's because I'm older now. Maybe it's because now I can look back and just see everything falling the fuck apart. Maybe the world broke that day and I just never realized it. Cause it's certainly gone to shit. All my expectations in life have turned to dust. Nothing went the way it was "supposed to" and here I am now, flailing in the wind. The bad news is nonstop. Everything feels like another weight. It shouldn't effect me and yet it feels like it does. Every day I feel my jaw drop a little less. How does it keep getting worse? Why can we never improve? They spent twelve years teaching us all a lie. That the world was stable, that we had a place in it, that we could "do anything", that we had "character", that we could "change the world". What was the point of it all? It just makes me feel so stupid.
Ugh, but now I'm just having a depressed ramble. I don't even know why I started writing this... I just felt compelled to. Because it's never bothered me before. This "anniversary" comes and goes yearly and I don't even pay attention to it. But today it hurt me. Today it caught up to me. And I don't even know why.
I've seen all of this before. It's nothing new. I've always been numb to it. Jaded. Cynical. Maybe it's the times we're in. Maybe it's because I'm more tired than I realized. Maybe its a lot of things...
But all of a sudden it all just hit me. Harder than it's ever hit me before. And I was crying and I was overcome and it was all just flooding back.
....I've never cried over it before.
The day it happened, class was about to change over to the second stop of the day. The basketball coach who taught our lousy-ass economics class was wheeling one of the carts with the tv on it into the center of the room, plugging it in, getting it turned on. That was new. The images of two buildings come up on screen, one looks like it's on fire? The bell rings, people are leaving the room to go to their next destination. A plane hits the building.
I laughed.
I always worry that will bother people when I say it. Hindsight 20/20 and all that. But it was hilarious. I'd never seen something so stupid actually happen before. I was a kid in my first or second year of high school. I didn't know yet there were actual people on the plane. In the building. I watched Power Rangers and shit all the time. Monsters and robots flew into buildings and exploded them constantly with no consequence. I hadn't made the real connections yet. I walked down the hall, laughing, "Some idiot flew a plane into a building." We got called out of normal classes and went to the auditorium to the teachers and the principal could tell us all about the fucking magazine sale drive we were gonna be doing that year for the school fundraiser... which was just a stupid thing we had to do. Maybe we'd win some dumb prizes, but probably not... Now I'm thinking about how we had to do that because the school was underfunded... this is how they tried to make ends meet. My god. It's always been like this. What a shitshow. But I sat there, as the world turned, next to my best friend and we joked. We made Wiley Coyote references and mocked holding up a tiny umbrella as an imaginary ceiling collapsed on us, because "Sir, there's a plane coming at us and there's nothing we can do!" Lol.
We were children.
Time passed by. My parents were out of town, away on one of my dad's work meetings in Los Angles. They'd been treating it like a vacation. My grandparents were babysitting my sister and me. Suddenly we didn't know if they'd be able to come home because all the planes had been grounded and we didn't know when they'd start up again. A day later I was having a personal crisis over a damned art project that was due and the teacher had misled me on the rules and everything was fucked. Everything I'd planned for the whole semester was ruined. And the people I'd have counted on to comfort me were thousands of miles away. Those tiny little things were more important than anything else. That was my world. Everything else was just something that was happening. It didn't effect me. We moved on. The world got worse, but my bubble never changed. Everything kept moving like nothing had happened until it seemed like everything was back on track.
Maybe it's because I'm older now. Maybe it's because now I can look back and just see everything falling the fuck apart. Maybe the world broke that day and I just never realized it. Cause it's certainly gone to shit. All my expectations in life have turned to dust. Nothing went the way it was "supposed to" and here I am now, flailing in the wind. The bad news is nonstop. Everything feels like another weight. It shouldn't effect me and yet it feels like it does. Every day I feel my jaw drop a little less. How does it keep getting worse? Why can we never improve? They spent twelve years teaching us all a lie. That the world was stable, that we had a place in it, that we could "do anything", that we had "character", that we could "change the world". What was the point of it all? It just makes me feel so stupid.
Ugh, but now I'm just having a depressed ramble. I don't even know why I started writing this... I just felt compelled to. Because it's never bothered me before. This "anniversary" comes and goes yearly and I don't even pay attention to it. But today it hurt me. Today it caught up to me. And I don't even know why.
That night a [big] tree fell in the backyard and my mother thought the terrorists were attacking!
Sophomore in high school. Just moved to a California, military base. All the high school kids went to a school off base. History teacher had the news on. I watched the second plane strike.
Almost 1/3 of the school wasn't there that day cause the base went into lockdown (our base featured a early missile detection system and a fleet of U2 stealth surveillance planes). Dad was a nervous wreck trying to contact Mom, who worked near the Pentagon. (She was fine.)
It was middle school for me. Someone interrupted the teacher to bring them a phone. They spoke in short, hushed tones. It was clear that the gravity of the situation hit them instantly. I thought it was a personal tragedy at first; a fire or a car accident. I remembered being worried for the teacher. Then we were all brought into the main room and the TV was brought out. We watched as the plane struck the second tower. I still kinda lock up when I remember seeing the images of the Pentagon with what looked like an entire side collapsed, knowing my dad was in that building.
My school was a small private school, mix of elementary and middle schoolers. I remember a few of the younger boys, 3rd or 4th grade, giggling as they watched the images. I snapped at them. I think if the shock wasn't still running it's course I would have been over the chairs to deck them. I think another student had family in the towers.
It's funny. What really strikes me about that day looking back was the cellphones. They were just common enough for them to not turn heads, but not so ubiquitous that everyone had them. I remember so many people trying to call loved ones that the lines were jammed. It took a while, hours at least, to hear that my dad was okay. I don't think my classmate got the good news I did. I don't remember seeing her much after that day.
Jesus it's been 19 years? There are adults now that don't remember that day. That don't remember being at war with the Middle East, that don't remember a time when Terrorists were more likely to be pissed off Irishmen or some white crackpot with a manifesto.
Maybe it's because I recognized the tragedy at a young age then, or maybe I'm just exhausted at the hypocrisy regarding what deaths we mourn and what we dismiss as acceptable casualties, or maybe I see far too much we lost as a country as result of politicians and rich people reacting to that day rather than from the day itself...but I just can't take today to meaningfully reflect anymore. Because it feels like an excuse not to reflect on the hundreds of thousands of easily preventable deaths we have currently in this country...an excuse for the massive wave of Islamophobia and racism that resulted...an excuse for why we have to waste so much money on a bloated and inefficient military and surrender so many rights in the name of "security"...
The fact it overshadows my oldest friend's birthday doesn't help either.