9:24 p.m. - 2002-09-11
one year later
I think I should write something today. I actually have a lot to write about, but that can wait for another day.
It doesn't seem like the attacks were a year ago today. Like everyone else, I can still remember exactly where I was... I can remember standing in the library staring at the television... coming home and talking to Dad, who'd read it on Reuters and thought that some practical joker had hacked into the system... Mom and Lauren coming back from Wesleyan hours late, after a cancelled college interview... but I don't need to share my memories of the day. I don't know anyone who died that day. I know people who could have. My grandfather, who works in Battery Park and was stuck there. Jack B., who took the train to the WTC every morning, but didn't go that day because his wife Beth convinced him to get a haircut for the wedding they would be attending that weekend. Other stories. We're inundated by stories, by these close calls, and also by the people who didn't get close calls, who didn't make it at all. Reading the names of the people who died took three hours. I sat in the library during a free today for 36 minutes, and they only got through a few letters of the alphabet.
I am not a terribly patriotic persun. The only time I ever felt patriotic was at the Olympics.
What affected me most was the loss of life. It's numbing, it's incomprehensible. Today I went back and read what I wrote one year ago. Mostly anger, anger, anger, anger. I didn't understand and I couldn't understand why people were happy over this. But the Anne Frank analogy is interesting in that entry; otherwise I wouldn't link it, my incoherence is almost embarrassing.
We had an assembly first period. We didn't make it for the moment of silence at 8:46. The band played, seniors read some useless and repetitive reflections by ninth-graders, Dr. M. made a poor speech, we went back to class.
I haven't cried yet. I didn't cry last year either. It's strange, because I usually cry so easily. I mean, I cried when I had trouble deciding what pair of boots to get! Why can't I cry over this type of horrific tragedy? Maybe for just that reason, that it's simply too horrific, too tragic. Maybe it still doesn't register.
On September 11th, after Mom and Lauren got home, we all joined each other in front of the television in the family room. Mom and Lauren were simply in states of shock; they hadn't known. What a way to find out, to get to the college where you plan to interview and to discover that everything has been cancelled, everyone's terrified, clustered in front of televisions, and someone has to inform you what happened. They listened to the radio the whole way back, but couldn't see the images on television.
As we watched, Alexa started to cry. "Oh, it's just so awful," she sobbed.
Kelsey and I looked at each other. Normally, we would have rolled our eyes and whispered "suck-up," but not that day.
