In Memoriam

Today I drove up Rt. 7 and listened to the news on the radio. The same thing I do every morning at 10 a.m. But today it was different because today was the fifth year anniversary of me doing that on 9/11, terrified out of my mind.
Five years ago I was driving up Rt. 7 after being let early out of class because two planes crashed into the World Trade Center and it wasn't just some dumb two person plane that got lost like I thought at first.
That was my first thought when a girl arrived late to my Geology lecture and told us that a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center building. My professor turned on the news and we saw that a second plane had crashed and it went from being a sad accident to a sick joke. How could this happen? How does something of such magnitude happen to us?
And then we left class, shaky and in the rain, to drive home listening to the radio and not knowing anything. And not being able to believe anything because you can't see it for yourself.
I listened to "Eliot in the Morning" and heard about the Pentagon and then I heard about a package being left on the Capital steps and I thought, "This is it. This is the end. There will be no more America. They have taken us out. What will become of us?"
And I was reminded of the panic people must have felt while listening to Orson Wells' "War of the Worlds" and actually believed aliens were attacking. Because it felt that surreal. It felt as though I should be looking up looking for planes overhead while I drove panicked and uncertain down Rt. 7.
I arrived home and my father was already there. We sat and waited and watched over and over and over. The planes crashing. People's shouts of disbelief that what they were witnessing was not just some CGI blue screen effect. This was real. About as real as it could ever get. We are so immune to the firey effects of blockbusters that I'm sure seeing it for real you don't know whether or not to trust your senses.
We watched as the towers came crashing down, a wave of dust and debris and steel bars bending as easily as seaweed. People leaping from shattered windows, hoping against hope that this would somehow save them. Would I have jumped? Or would I have hoped that by staying in the building I would somehow be able to ride it out like a surfer on the debris? How do you come to that conclusion that this action will be better than what is waiting for you, the uncertainty they felt.
We watched it over and over until I thought I would be sick.
My sister came home from school and we remembered it was her birthday. She was 14. We went out to dinner at Ruby Tuesday, the only place that was open, just to escape the television. She stayed home. She didn't want to leave. We came home and returned to our vigil. I couldn't bear it anymore and went upstairs to watch 'Stepmom.' There was a shot of the New York skyline and the twin towers. I thought about how much had changed in a few minutes. We would never again see that skyline in the movies. And the ones that we did see it in would only remind us of what used to be.
The next day as I ws driving to class I couldn't believe that the pavement I drove on could be so normal and gray. How did it not rise up and cry? How did the trees wave so calmly as if nothing in our world had changed or the stoplights continue to change their red-yellow-green cycles and not blink red-red-red as if in panic. Why did the cars drive in their lanes and not stop, resist the repetition of daily life and stand wailing? Were the people in them crying as they drove, like me? Trying to see through a wave of tears and mantain a sense of normalcy that driving dictates. How did the world not collapse for a few minutes, in on itself and grovel underr the pain? How did it go back to being normal? This is what I want to say.
It's been five years and things have gone back to normal, almost. Until I remember our government and how things changed and how they have used that fear to lead us down a path that frightens me.
I am proud of the people that came forth on that day and for how this country reacted swiftly to a tragedy that affected us all. I am terrified by the people who used this to push a hateful ideology. I am afraid for my country and I am proud of it in moments. I couldn't live away from it and I dream of escaping it. I love it in its details. I hope the best for it. I am afraid of flagwavers. I wonder if that makes me a terrible person because they disgust me and make me nervous. Does that make me unpatriotic? Am I abandoning those people who died so needlessly?
Everything has changed. And yet, nothing has.