Jacquelyn's Space

Today is the day, the tenth anniversary of 9/11. Sigh. I am not sure what to do to remember the date. Well I am leaving to go to Mackinac Island. They are actually doing a memorial service on Mackinac – perhaps my husband and I will attend. My husband isn’t much for remembering the day and truth to tell neither am I. It was a horrible event. I was touched by it but after that day I decided that I need to live my life as if it never happened. I was not going to let the terrorist acts change me. I do remember, I do grieve, and I may even have a private moment thinking about the day (a classmate’s essay about 9/11 was very touching) but I cannot openly memorialize that day – the day the terrorists chose. The day some people in this country have fetishized. As unpopular as my opinion may be (or perhaps unpatriotic to some), that is how I feel.

My 9/11 memories, what I was doing when, actually kind of suck. My boyfriend was about to lose his house because he had been unable to pay the property taxes. He and I were in downtown Flint in a meeting about how to save your house if you owe property taxes. The meeting was just wrapping up when the lawyer running the thing came back from getting some forms or something and said the building was closing and we would all have to leave. I couldn’t hear exactly why she said we had to but I did hear something about planes, WTC, and terrorists. I didn’t trust what she (and others at the meeting) were telling me because so far the people running this meeting seemed rather incompetent.

My boyfriend and I left. Our car radio didn’t work so we couldn’t listen to the news. We had no idea. My husband needed to stop by his work to check his schedule so we stopped and he came out telling me planes had struck the World Trade Centers – all his co-workers were talking about it. I still didn’t trust what anybody was saying. We drove home, getting there about 11:30am/noon. By that time everything had happened. Our roommate was in the living room watching TV. He was excited “You gotta’ see this!” (He was kind of an insensitive dork). We watched the news as they replayed the towers falling. We then learned all about what happened, the two other planes. We had pretty much missed it while it was going on. I still didn’t believe it.

I remember, after I saw the towers fall and I lay on the couch (the old comfortable orange couch that had been my parents while I was growing up) listening to the stories – the horror of people jumping from the towers desperate to escape really got to me. Helpless people on planes used as destructive missiles. I had to turn away and I did. I turned my back to the TV, hid my face and cried into that old couch.

After I cried for the victims disbelief returned – this couldn’t be real. I sat up. I had to get ready for work. I didn’t want to show my emotion to the dorky roommate or to my boyfriend. They weren’t crying. We all just couldn’t believe it. I wished I didn’t have to work that night. I continued watching the news until I left for work around 4pm. I should have got a nap but I couldn’t quit watching the TV, searching for some kind of answer. Searching for some truth, some sign that this really happened. Watching it on TV made it seem like it was fiction, a TV show. I wasn’t scared, I just wanted to know what happened and why. How could it have happened? I wanted to know what was going to happen next – how the country was going to change. Even though what happened seemed unreal and I hadn’t really got my head around it I knew this was going to change the country. What was going to happen next? I didn’t know I still wasn’t afraid.

I went to work. I was a server at a small town restaurant. It was busy that night. It was actually a comfort to be working and among many people with the same thoughts. The events of the morning still didn’t seem real even though I kept seeing it replayed on the TVs and everyone was talking about it. It just did not compute with me. I was in denial. I am still in denial. Whenever I see the footage from that day it just doesn’t seem real to me. I have to ask myself, did that really happen? I guess I just needed to protect myself.