Five Years

Remembering 9/11 is something like drinking concentrated sorrow. Although the memories flicker in my mind, their effect is felt in my stomach. Its my gut, not my brain, that hurts when I recall it.

I was in my first month of college. I was still getting to know people, and though surrounded by acquaintances, had no real friends. Perhaps that's why its not really surprising that the most vivid memories are of moments spent with other people, all of us struggling in the same way to understand the terrior wreaked upon our country. I spent the whole day in company of others. My suitemates had their TV on all day. I remember attending two classes. One was at 7:30 in the morning. As I walked into class, the second World Trade Center came crashing down above the heads of its occupants and those attempting to rescue the people crashed inside. I had no idea.

I remember first hearing about it in class in vague ways. People were upset, but I don't think anybody in my class really understood what was happening. Nobody knew the tower's had collapsed. I heard that the Pentagon had also been attacked. That felt like war, not blind empty terror, but like something out of a Tom Clancy novel.

On my way back from class and breakfast, I remember hugging someone from my floor who was on his way somewhere else. I remember running to my room to find my roommate still asleep. I remember sitting for hours on a couch in the room next to mine watching news broadcasts that had absolutely no information at all, just images. Again and again I watched the towers fall and airplanes fall into them. I saw the Pentagon burning, and I looked outside where there were no airplanes heading to Los Angeles anymore. I remember the eerie sky's quiet expanses being filled once more, in a few days with planes I just couln't trust anymore.

I remember being angry, but I wasn't as angry as I was sad. I'm still sadder than angry. Someone I was watching TV with said now he understood why you kill. He understood that part in Saving Private Ryan where the soldiers wanted to kill the German for working the machine gun that ended their medic's life. There was an awful lot of hate for the people that did it swirling around even our little Christian campus. Of course, I was in a guy's dorm. I think we all felt betrayed by our own helplessness to do anything.

I remember my friends signing up for the armed forces, and I remember the day the bombs started dropping on Afghanistan. I was on my way to church.

I wonder what I will remember in 10 years, about the 5 years yet to come.

Kyrie Eleison