email171.xml

email171.xml

born-digital

email

unknown

yes

2002-05-02

It started off as any other day. I woke up and went to the gym. I then went over to my parents house and was watching the morning news with my mother when the 'breaking news' of the first plain crash came on. They had some footage of the first tower that had been hit and my mother and I watched in horror that such an awful accident could have occurred. We talked about how many people could have been hurt. Shortly after, I watched the second plain hit on national TV, and thats when we both realized that this wasnt an accident and someone had purposely hit those two buildings. I was in a state of shock right off the bat, because I couldnt believe that anyone could have committed such a grotesque act of evil. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I still was thinking that maybe it still was an accident, because no one could have been so sick as to do this.
I called my boyfriend at work to find out if he had heard what was going on yet. He said that he had, and was currently (like everyone else at his job) stopped everything and both eyes fixed unmovable on the television news broadcast. When first news of the possibility of terrorist was raised, I felt an overwhelming sense of devastation. How could anyone have done this? What have we done so bad to some other country that terrorist feel the need to threaten so many lives, so unmercifully.
My boyfriend got home from work as I set on the couch, still my eyes not leaving the screen. I updated my boyfriend on the latest news, of the estimated death toll, and we watched as people jumped from hundreds of feet in the air, figuring it a better idea to commit suicide by jumping than to burn to death in the blazing building. So many people were stuck in the top floors, I remember praying for them, and begging God not to make so many people suffer.
The entire day, I didnt leave my apartment, I just watched TV. That night, I didnt go to bed until late, I couldnt, I felt sick to my stomach. I just kept the news on and kept hoping that the emergency personnel saved more lives than were lost. I had no idea how serious the event was until I woke up the next day to flames still coming out of the towers. The fires still werent out. I felt an overwhelming sense of loss for all the people who may have lost loved ones in the tragedy.
The magnitude of the event didnt hit me until a couple of days later, when the fires still werent out and the death toll count began. It started off so small, a couple of hundred. Days later it began going into the thousands. I began getting depressed for all of the people who had been touched. My family even knew one person who died. The more I shared my grievances with my friends, the more I realized that almost everyone I knew had been personally affected somehow. Everyone knew someone who knew someone that had been killed. The magnitude of this event superceded any news that I had lived through in my lifetime.
Almost eight months later, it still hurts. And I didnt even get truly personally affected. I pray for the people who are still in such pain because they lost their father or wife or sister or child. Its a void that will never be filled, a senseless waste of so many professional lives and so many innocent souls. Those people got up for work and kissed their familys good-bye and went to do their job, not knowing that September 11, 2001 was the last day of their lives.
No one could say that anything good came out of these tragedies, but I believe that it brought me closer to my loved ones, and made me realize how quickly life can be taken away.

May 2, 2002

September 11-personal account