5 Years Later.
I thought that today I would post my own 9/11 story, what I was doing that day, how it felt. But, I’m not really sure that it would matter, because you all felt the same way. You all went through it.
What most sticks out in my mind from that day are these two things.
1- My mom flew out that morning to Washington DC. She couldn’t call out of her hotel room or use her cellphone. She watched the fire at the pentagon from her hotel window. The hours between waking up to find my father staring with a pale face at the television and the moment we heard from her that she was alright were an excersize in control. I knew she had flown out before the ill-fated plane or whatever it was, so I had at least that piece of mind, but in the back of my and my father’s head…we were scared.
2. It was my boyfriend Glenn’s birthday that day. I was making him a cake while I watched the towers fall. He was working in Boston and left when he heard we had been attacked. He had band practice that night, and after a long day of watching the news and talking about what would happen next, we left for Hanson, MA. It was a back-road route to the music complex, and as we moved into side streets I saw the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen.
There were people, families, neighbors, friends…all lining the sidewalk with candles, flags and signs. I don’t think one of us spoke, we honked and waved. I brushed tears from my face while I watched these people do the same. I cried for a week after that in front of the television. It wasn’t really until I saw those people all together like that, that I realized the gravity of the situation.
5 years later, we’re arguabley no safer than we were before. We’ve been kept in constant fear by our leader and our media to shove us behind a war in Iraq that was UNjustifiable and we still have not caught the man who orchestrated the murder of so much innocent life. Our president had an amazing opportunity to finally unite our uniformly divided nation and bring this country, this amazing country, together. He blew it. He called critics of the Iraq war unpatriotic and threw up fences between the right and left. He used 9/11 to push every single agenda and kept.us.afraid.
I am not afraid. I read, I was there when you said Saddam was involved with 9/11, then when you said “we never said that”. I was there when you ignored decorated army generals when they begged you for more troops and told you the real battle would come AFTER Saddam’s empire fell and you told us “MISSION ACCOMPLISHED”. And I’m here now when you say you’re “spreading democracy” by appointing YOUR hand-selected officials and allowing torture to be used in prisons. I am still here, and eventually this country won’t go on with their index fingers in their ears. Come 2008, things are going to change. We owe it to the people that fell 5 years ago today, to change.
