I have no trouble remembering 911 and reflect upon that horrific day quite frequently, because my birthday is September 11. Regularly, in various places, I get asked “what’s your birthdate,” and every time, I say 9/11 (I’m not divulging the year I was born, but assume it was a while ago) I get a remark that takes the subject from the day, I entered the world, to the day, the world’s awareness of terrorism changed. I’m really fine with that. It provides me an opportunity to reflect differently.
On that momentous morning, well before any dangerous plane was even in the air, I was awake and off to a rocky start. I had been working hard n recovering some childhood memories through therapy, and had had a horrendous nightmare surrounding that stuff- maybe real memories that I can’t deal with- that left me feeling shaken and ungrounded. I had recently been moved into a shared office space, and wasn’t getting along with any of my office mates, who had all worked together in a shared space for a long time. They were loud, flippant, and lacked any real courtesy. For example, one day, I returned from lunch to find that they had decided to use my desk as their lunch table since their desks were all too cluttered. I was stressed about how much work I had to do, where I had to work, and I wasn’t feeling grounded. A crap way to start the day. But in hind sight, my problems were so small in comparison, that today, I look back and wonder how could I ever let that level of stuff bother me.
I wasn’t aware of anything that was going on as the attacks began. I was working away, trying to focus on coding a web-database connection that wasn’t working as I had expected, and I was several weeks behind schedule to deliver on our web site. I needed every bit of concentration to stay focused in the code, and off of the thoughts and scary stuff running through my head. I had put on earphones, and some music but I could still hear lots of stuff from the others in the room. On of my office mates had a radio turned on and it was playing loudly. I couldn’t really hear what was being said, but I couldn’t believe that she was being so insensitive to my needs for a quiet work space. I took off my ear phones and asked if she could turn it down, and that was when I found out what had happened and why they had it on so loudly. Like a startling collision, I had this immediate awareness that history was happening, and nothing would be quite the same again. And, I had been so caught up in the smallness of my own life, I wouldn’t even have known it was all happening. And truthfully, at that moment, I couldn’t know about it all. I already didn’t feel like I was standing on solid ground, and then to see the larger sense of ground crumbling was more than I could deal with.
On NPR Story Corps this week, two men who had worked at Ground Zero after the attack were featured. One commented about how, he literally thought the world was coming to an end after the planes hit the towers. I felt similarly. At one point, everyone left work, and as I headed out of the building, I called my partner and a few friends. I wasn’t sure I could handle all of what I was experiencing, and through those connections, I began to get a grasp on my ground.
Bearing Witness. I once heard an author, who, now I can’t recollect her name, talk about the need to bear witness in the face of horrific violence and brutality. One avenue, is to get overwhelmed because you (alone or even collectively) can’t stop the trauma from happening. A different avenue, is to get strong, and recognize that while you can’t stop it, you can, with every fiber of your being, be present to it, so that what is happening is known and thus can never be forgotten. Then, down the road, if others attempt to exploit or misrepresent the reality of it, you have the truth inside of you. Bearing witness doesn’t mean doing nothing to help others, but rather instead of distracting yourself because you can’t make it not happen, you own the value of being fully present and doing what you can do, and hold the reality in you as well.
Today, in this quiet morning, I am remembering all of that day. It isn’t as fully vivid as it once was, but unbelievably sharp and detailed compared to anything from that long ago.