I walked home with one of my friends. She wore a scarf (what I called it at the time, from the lack of knowing, what she called it when she was with her friends) on her head. Throughout our high school years, I watched that scarf come off in school often. Though her taking it off was out of rebellion for freedom in her own life, I wonder if sometimes if it was for the fear of being stereotyped as many people who held the beliefs of that cloth were.
It never matter to me. A person is a person, except those who do evil deeds. Even with that belief, I do believe that even those who are evil are human. Something happened along the way that are beyond the average person. I feel sad that evil lived in those people who caused 9/11 and those who have ever committed evil acts and continue to do so. They will never know the goodness of the world.
My dad had went into the city that day. I was scared. When he finally called and said he was okay, I was so relieved. He wasn't near the devastation, it was just harder for him to get home. God Bless those who didn't make it home that day. God Bless those who did.
From Lefferts and Rockaway Blvds, you were able to see the slight image of Twin Towers. Now there is nothing.
A month before 9/11, I was in the city. I walked by the Twin Towers for the first time. We didn't stop to look, but I kept looking up and turning back in awe of the buildings. If I only knew.
It is the morning of the ten year anniversary and I am watching the ceremony. Before today, I had no feelings about it one way or another. Of course I have sadness, compassion, and remembrance. Of course the city is the last place I would go today and I'm staying away from subways. Anything else is game because you can't live in total fear. That's what the terrorists wanted, our complete fear. And I, for one, do not like to let the bad guys win. I will always have a slight one as we all do, but to break down into complete fear every 9/11 would be a dishonor to everyone who has died because of this.
In terms of being emotional, I wasn't until I sat down and watched the names being read. The names of strangers who loss their lives in such a senseless way has non-stop tears rolling down my face. Watching the faces of those who directly loss so much in the span of a couple of hours in one day makes my heart ache.
The saddest thing is to watch children trace the names of people they will never see again. Some of them never got to know those names in this living, breathing life. I can't stand it, it hurts to see people kiss the names of people they will never see again. It hurts that those names even have to be there.
I can't believe that my peers and friends were 15 and 14 ten years ago. We are now women and men, who grew up into adults in a post 9/11 world. We watched a war, seen economic downfall, been through our own insignificant problems. We have witness over tragedies, personal and beyond us. But we have also found love, made children, and tried to make a difference in our own lives and the lives of others. We wake up everyday, alive. The best thing we can do for the victims of 9/11 is to live life because they didn't get the chance to. To not waste our lives because as we saw ten years ago, it can all be over in a second.
In unrelated loss, I want to say I miss you and I love you to my Tio Raymond, whose 3 year anniversary was earlier in the week, to my grandmother Iris whose birthday would have been two days ago, and to each of my grandfathers, their anniversaries are coming up in October. Their deaths are the closest I can feel to the pain that the 9/11 families feel today. May God bless your souls and the souls of those loss ten years ago today.