In remembrance of September 11th

Trigger warning:

September 11^th. 2001.

I was nine when the towers fell.

I heard something about buildings burning in New York City from my bus driver. My smarty pants self thought “There are ALWAYS buildings burning in New York City. Big deal.”

That was all I got the whole school day...my teacher was either ignorant of what was going on, or, more likely, chose not to reveal anything to us. I come home to see my mother, sobbing to the footage of the south tower's collapse. I sobbed too, but mostly because my mother was sobbing (and what little boy doesn't sob when his mother sobs) and also because of the destruction of one of my favorite landmarks to build in Sim City 3000. (I was nine, don't judge.)

I remember the unfolding of the aftermath. I can't remember all of what was going on in my 9 year old mind, but I do remember sensing the shift in the collective conscious...I knew that everything had just completely changed. I remember the inspiring stories of all the congressional body hugging, crying and singing patriotic songs, and remember comments on how unusual that was. I remember the gloom and terror and everybody on Fox News freaking out about it for weeks afterwards, every bomb threat became a headline. I also remember the solidarity displayed by America in the weeks afterwards, the sense of communion I had with other Americans thousands of miles away. I remember the constant replay of the attack footage and, being fascinated by disasters of every stripe, glued to that footage like any time I saw my favorite tornado movies. I was too innocent and removed from events to experience any impact to myself, but I was sober enough to feel the gravitas, and to comprehend somewhat that I was witnessing the unfolding of something very, very important.

15 years have intervened since then, as have two American wars, economic turbulence, the rise of myriad threats to freedom, and the emergence of a global political reality doubly as dense and tense and intricate as any hairtrigger moment in history. As my experiences have accumulated, my brain and body matured, my identity emerged and my understanding deepened, my relationship to 9/11 and to those memories has also evolved.

With the explosion of the internet came Youtube, and with Youtube hundreds and thousands of pieces of footage made publicly available. I would periodically binge-watch these pieces of footage, sometimes for hours at a time. In my comfortable, cushioned middle-class upbringing, this footage was a window onto a foreign world that, while unfamiliar and full of hostility and anger and bloodcurdling hatred, had direct impact on my existance and thus required me to understand it. For years I viewed these pieces of footage and feel a thrill of dramatic excitement like in an action movie. I researched the physics behind the collapse of the towers, I saw the numbers of lives lost, I factualized and intellectulized it. It seemed so fantasy-like, so unreal, like there should be scrolling credits at the end of each video and an interview with actors talking about how making the movie was such an experience.

Then, I discovered the videos of the jumpers.

Everyone has a moment where their innocence is lost. This was mine.

I avoided those videos for a long time, but there came a point I knew that I needed to experience something that they had to offer...that I needed to watch them, and not just watch, but engage with them, to empathize, to visualize, to put myself in the shoes of who I was watching. While it was only imagination coupled with piecing together a reality I had gleaned from pieces of video evidence, it was enough for me to finally comprehend. No longer did these videos seem like fantasy footage from a movie. I realized, in every sense of that word. I REAL-ized it. It was a real-ization of what despair is, what it feels like, what it stems from, what it causes us as humans to do...

I haven't voluntarily watched 9/11 footage since. It has become very painful to relive, to think about. Defining moments are often like that. They come, they leave their gouge marks, and they leave. We sit, we wrangle, we ignore, we refuse, we hurt, we bleed, we cry, we anger. And though some among Americans responded with hatred, there will come a time when we will realize that we must let go. We stand, we accept, we acknowledge, we heal, we smile, we forgive We refuse to remember...but we cannot forget. We will never forget. We will never forget what it meant to be so deeply and irrevocably wounded...and we will never forget that we will heal, and in healing, forgive.

We will never forget.

Forget the stars and stripes and the garish 19^th century march tunes that accompany it. The emblem of my Americanism is my life: taking my freedom of choice, my abundant privilege and my economic and spiritual opportunities and utilizing them in honoring and serving my fellow man, distinctions of nationality, religion or ethnicity be damned. It is in making my everday living after the manner of the example of those firefighters, who went in to save regardless of station in life. This is America. This is how I remember 9/11, and this is how I honor my heritage.