On the 10th Anniversary of the 9-11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, I felt I’d be remiss not to acknowledge the day and the lives lost… and the lives impacted afterwards, from soldiers in Iraq to the American citizens who are currently losing social services because of a deficit caused by our insane war response. But I’m not going to go into a rant about the Bush Administration and how they used the War on Terror to pig-tie our country hostage for their war-mongering, fascist police state. Even though they did…
Instead, I’m going to talk about me and how I felt on 9-11. And why my feelings don’t matter at all.
I was a junior in college when the attacks happened. I was working at the MU Museum of Anthropology and heard about the first plane from my boss as I sat down to input artifact information into our collections database. The majority of the department was huddled around a tv, in a collective anxious vigil, waiting to see what would happen next. Sadly, what happened was the murder of many more people. I, however, remained seated at my computer, checking the news updates, but fighting against the desire to watch it happen live. To this day, I’ve still never seen video of the attacks and I’ve avoided photographs as well, as much as I can.
In truth, I can’t bring myself watch with ANY war footage or natural disaster footage. It’s not just 9-11. It’s also the Holocaust, Cambodia, Hurricane Katrina… As a historian, this goes against my very nature and training. Events and the artifacts that capture their original context are what I seek out, what I love, what informs my understanding of the world. I need to watch what actually happens, when possible, to process the facts for myself. But here’s the thing–for events like 9-11, for those moments of human violation, I actually don’t need to see it for myself. I don’t need to process it. It’s too personal, somehow. Too overwhelming, almost like a violation of another person’s moment and truth. Why do I need to see it, when I wasn’t there? Why do I need to talk about where I was, when I wasn’t there? I know the collective community is what creates empathy and shared understanding… And I know that people not in the attacks were affected by the events, emotionally, financially, psychologically… But somehow, I can only bring myself to read or hear the words of those affected that day. What’s important to me is how the people who actually EXPERIENCED these tragic events describe it. How they processed it. How they choose to share it…
I don’t matter. THEY MATTER.
So, 10 years later, I’m once again holding my hand over my eye when a tv is near. I’m avoiding newsites for the next 48 hours. I’m tucking away the Time Magazine that just came in the mail. But I’m not tucking away my heart from the victims. I’m trying to steel myself and hear their words. And I’m trying to understand what it meant to them, 10 years ago today…
Because otherwise, what could it ever possibly mean to me?
