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Smithsonian website

September 11th, 2001 was my first encounter with true loss. Death was something I knew about, and claimed to understand, but it didn't become real until that day. I was only eleven years old. Many people would say that I was "too young" to have any understanding of death. That day was different though, for all of the middle school students around me. We were an hour and a half away from Manhattan, but we were New Yorkers too. Even if we lived out in the suburbs, and couldn't navigate our way through the city grid without a map, we still identified very strongly with the iconic city skyline. It was a skyline we were just getting to know at that point. Many of us had only been to the city a few times, always on special occasions. That distant, almost-magical place was under attack. A lot of innocence was lost that day.

I never cried in front of people. No matter how awful I felt, or what terrible names bullies might have called me, I insisted upon hiding my tears until I could be alone, or with my family or closest friends. I cried that day. There was no hesitation on my part. It was terrifying to see classmates--whom I had considered very mature--weeping freely. I couldn't recall having ever felt fear quite so powerful as I did that day. I had been afraid to move to a new school district, afraid to go to school after I had been bullied. But this was different. This was a fear that I could feel running through every vein in my body. It was a week before I felt like I had stopped shaking.

My relatives were fine. My father had been working far from the city that day. My uncle worked in the Capitol building, not the Pentagon. My aunt had been in Connecticut. Everyone was safe. But even hearing my mother's voice over the school phone, telling me that everyone was okay, even the people I hadn't thought of initially, couldn't reassure me.

I don't remember anything that happened after 11AM that day. My memories of every moment of the event as it unfolded are crystal clear. How I wasn't incredibly phased by the announcement that the first plane had hit. The strangeness of my gym class being ushered back inside a mere few minutes after we had reached the soccer field, and the subtle hints that made me feel it was unsafe to be outdoors. I remember sitting dumbfounded in my next class, Spanish. There was no lesson that day. They turned on the television, so our young Spanish teacher, and twenty-or-so eleven and twelve-year-olds could watch the news as the horrible footage was played over and over again. I remember not hesitating for an instant when a guidance counselor came to the door asking for anyone who needed to call home to follow him. I remember nothing after I spoke to my mother. So many other events in my life have been chaotic and terrifying, but I can remember at least vaguely what happened through the remainder of the day. Not September 11th. I shut down.

September 11th, 2001 is the reason I attended my first wake and funeral, at eleven years old. A friend of the family, a firefighter, had gone into the buildings to save lives. He never came back out again. Nor did they ever find his remains. He simply disappeared completely.

My college will be lowering the flag in the morning, at the time of the first attack. I don't think I will be attending, as I don't know that I have the strength to be there. I will certainly keep a minute of silence at 1PM, in memory of the lives lost. Perhaps I will write a blog entry, chronicling my feelings on that day, as I did on the fifth anniversary.

But most importantly, I will continue my studies in Peace and Conflict, in the hopes that someday terror and violence and war will be but a bad memory.