I’m hesitant to post my thoughts on this anniversary, given how much “remembrances” are filling the news media today — and how far too many outlets are capitalizing on grief. A Twitter acquaintance of mine has referred to this as “emotional pornography,” and I don’t think he’s too far off the mark.
But what I’m remembering here this morning is the total disconnect I saw in my community on 11 September 2001 and in the days that followed.
I was working that morning, sitting at my computer in my home office, with NPR’s morning coverage on the radio in the background. First there was a report of a single airplane crashing into one of the World Trade Center towers. Either they weren’t giving details — or I wasn’t listening too closely — because I thought they were talking about a small aircraft like a Cessna or something. I thought it sounded tragic, and assumed it was some kind of pilot error. I kept working.
When reports came in about a second plane crashing into the towers, it still didn’t occur to me that something more deliberate was at work. Again, I assumed they were talking about small aircraft. I started wondering if there might be some magnetic or electrical interference with the planes’ instruments.
NPR cut away from New York to a reporter who was at the Pentagon, covering some meeting or military initiative. Something like that. I don’t remember. I do remember that during the man’s report, sirens sounded in the background. The NPR host asked what was going on, and the reporter responded that the Pentagon was on fire. Both men laughed nervously, as if they were thinking, “Great. What next?” It was such a crazy morning, with so much going wrong, and the pieces weren’t being put together yet.
By the time I flipped on the television, it was obvious that the United States was under terrorist attack.
Like so many other Americans, I was glued to the television and radio, trying to make sense of what was happening. There were frantic calls between me and my mother as we tried to reach my sister, living in New York City. I heard military jets screaming through the skies overhead, scrambling out of Langley and headed north.
When I finally reached my sister, she described the surreal experience she was having. Standing in her office’s conference room, she could look out one window and see smoke billowing from the World Trade Center area, and then glance out another window to watch runners and families in Central Park, going about their business as though nothing extraordinary was happening.
After several hours of panicked television coverage — and endless replays of footage of the second plane slamming into the tower, and of the towers collapsing — I knew I had to get out of the house. I turned off the television and the radio, and I sat outside for a while. But the military jets were still streaking overhead every so often, so I went to the grocery store in search of comfort food. I drove to my local Ukrops, parked my car, and stepped inside.
The place was absolutely silent. It was full of people, shopping in a kind of haze, on automatic pilot. There was some small talk here and there, forced laughter. But no one was talking about what was happening. No one mentioned the attacks, the planes, the towers, the deaths, the fear.
I got angry. I don’t know why my reaction to other people’s silent shock and confusion would be anger and frustration, but it was. I very nearly broke out into the “Star Spangled Banner” in the middle of the produce section — one, to give some hope and to remind myself and everyone at Ukrops that we’re Americans, dammit. We’re resilient and strong and can come back from just about anything. But I also wanted to jolt people out of their disorientation, to wake them up from auto-pilot and get people to start talking to each other, to embrace and weep if they had to. To get them to come together and stop insulating themselves in their individual bubbles of fear.
But I didn’t start singing. Everyone deals with trauma in his or her own way. I had no right to force my process on anyone else. So I paid for my groceries — probably some green beans and Goldfish crackers — and went home.
On Friday, 14 September, a nationwide candlelight vigil had been organized — light a candle at 7 p.m. and keep it lit for one hour. All across the United States, Americans were lighting candles and putting them in their windows. They were lighting candles and sitting on their porches and gathering in front yards and on sidewalks and in community green spaces to come together as neighbors and support each other through anger, grief and grasping at understanding.
I lit a candle and carried it out to my front steps. I settled it down beside me and sat down on the bricks. And waited.
No one else in my neighborhood — at least no one within sight of my house — lit a single candle. A few cars went by. A few people made appearances at their doors to pay for pizza delivery. Other than that, my community was shut up tight. After an hour, I carried my candle back inside.
Over the next year, I noticed a lot of six- and eight-foot-high privacy fences going up in my neighborhood, where three-foot chain link fences had sufficed before. There were more bickering voices behind closed doors, more anger and apathy in the community at large.
With the relentless airing on television of footage of the attacks, we became an entire nation dealing with post-traumatic stress disorder. We retreated into our homes in fear, stocking up resources and supplies against possible future attacks. Our military bombed Afghanistan, lashing out in a mostly futile attempt to vent the anger and panic roiling inside us all. We were desperate for someone, something to blame, and we found and even invented scapegoats aplenty.
Our president led us into a holy war, drawing a line in the sand and challenging the rest of the world to declare their allegiance: “You’re either with us or against us.” Such an uncompromising stance doesn’t allow for healing, or for really anything other than more division, more fear, more suspicion…. Pretty much setting the stage for more violence.
As someone who’s dealt with her own trauma and victimization, I recognized what was happening. These were classic attitudes and behaviors in the aftermath of outrageous violation — similar to what survivors of rape and domestic abuse experience — but it was happening on a national scale.
And it still is. We’ve not given ourselves any real room or pathway for healing. As a nation, we’re still setting ourselves at odds with the rest of the world, when in reality it’s a relatively small (though powerful) fundamentalist organization that has targeted us. The United States’ response has been way over the top, and it has trickled down into communities across the country.
I moved from Virginia to Oregon in 2004, and I’ve seen evidence of this lingering PTSD on both coasts. We want to come together, but we’re still afraid. We want to rise up as one, to repair the damage to our hearts and souls, but we’re often too busy being self-righteous and miming confidence. And so we bicker amongst ourselves. Communities and neighborhoods that were already strong and tight before 11 September 2001 have come through this even stronger and tighter and often more optimistic and proactive than ever. But others are falling apart at the seams.
We’re disconnected as a nation, as communities, as neighbors and as human beings. And we’ll remain that way until we take the courageous step to heal, to take fearless inventory of our own shortcomings and contributions to the residual crisis, to make amends for our actions and behaviors and to make the choice to see the world differently, so that we can all together experience a world that is not fiercely pitted against us but which is a global community — with its own troubles, differences and strife — that is waiting to welcome us with open arms.
