one woman's thoughts

I use this blog to discuss entertaining issues and prefer to avoid the hard topics.  I prefer to not discuss anything sad or negative.  I have a wonderful therapist with whom I share the traumas of my life so I need not burden others.  Still, I wish to share my thoughts on this day.

I have to start with the fact I am weird.  Most of my friends know I am really weird.  One of my “special powers” is empathy.  I have since been defined are part Betazoid (empathic Star Trek TNG alien).  I don’t have normal empathy…like everything else in my life it is overly sensitive and just plain crazy.  I can tell you everything about the day in grade school when a plan went down into the Potomac River.  I can relive the crash and rescue with the images replaying in my mind as if I was there.  I am not psychic… just overly emotional…or nuts. 

The second part of my background is growing up military.  My family business is the military.  So many of us have been or currently are in the armed forces.   I chose another path, but the military is in my blood and I was acutely aware the danger our solders face. I have studied military history, watch the world events, seen the harsh realities beyond our country’s borders.  Long before moving to Hawai’i and visiting the USS Arizona I understood the events at Pearl Harbor and Hickam AFB.  Later, living on Fort Kamehameha, I passed the bullet holes remaining in the buildings every day.  I recall the 1983 Beirut Marine barracks bombing as if it was yesterday.  The 1989 ambush and murder of the Green Beret in the Philippines shook me to my core.  My father was a Ranger and a Green Beret.  I remember my first thought that day…where was my father? 

So I discovered on 9-11 that I was having a slightly different experience from those around me. Ironically I started the day in an unusual manner…watching cartoons.  Normally I have news on while getting ready for work.  I will flip between the locals and nationals catching me up from the night before.  For some reason I was watching cartoons with William, who was 6, and my husband Russel.  When I got into my car, I put on NPR as usual.  After listening for what felt like an eternity I shut off the car and ran back into the house.  I recall yelling to put the news on…I remember the howl inside my head.  I knew immediately it was terrorism – I had read enough intelligence in my days (non-classified) to know.  I also knew how it would end…

Then I realized I had to get to the office… I worked for a studies abroad program.  I do not remember driving but I remember the chaos.  The next several hours was spent fielding calls from frantic parents, while trying to remain calm myself.  Thousands of families wanted their kids home.  I had to explain they were safer staying put…then explaining there was no way home as all air traffic was grounded…listening to them cry while holding in my own agony.  I had friends in New York - I was sending emails to track down everyone I knew.  The TVs all showed the same images.  I felt the war zone atmosphere; I could feel the panic there and here.  All I could do was pray.  Then there was the Pentagon, for me that was even more emotional …I could only see my family, in uniform, in harm’s way.  The loss was unbearable.

The next day, when the immediate shock had waned, when I had heard the stories of my friends and family, as we learned the full extent of the horror…I discovered how many people in this country truly did not know things like this could happen.  Although most in the world of intelligence and terrorism thought an attack on our soil was a “when” not an “if” scenario most Americans were unaware.  Even military families were not always well-informed.  To this day I meet people who think Black Hawk Down was a cool military movie but not a real tragedy.  Today’s generation could not fathom what it meant to be a POW.  Even the USS Cole, blown up only a year earlier, was barely a blip in American news.  For the first time I understood that I was not merely fanatically empathic …I also knew about the evil lurking on our planet.  It was strange watching the rest of this country talk about losing their innocence…about having their core beliefs and sense of security shaken.  Although I felt excruciating pain that day and the year to follow, especially as I have to watch too many family members go to war, I did not have *that* feeling.  I did not have that innocence to lose or a feeling of security within our borders.  Initially I had a kind of strange anger…how could the rest of this country be shocked, how could they not know the danger out there, how dare they not realize we had already been under attack for year…but then I the anger went away.  Thank God they did not know.  I am glad most people were not news-junkies like me, not obsessed with the wars around us, and not conscience of the growing threat.  The fact that, for a short period of time, our people did have innocence - a peace.  Who wouldn’t want that?

Today the pain is still real.  The families who have lost their loved ones that day, God bless you.  To those who survived, God bless you.  To those who have gone to war, God bless you.  To those who have given of their mind, bodies, and lives…God bless you.  To those who continue to live every day, God bless you.  Simply surviving as a country and as a people means they did not win.  As hard as the last 10 years has been, we are a nation of liberty, freedom, strength and love.  Keep it that way.