9/11, A Decade Later
Like most of you, I’ve spent this week thinking about today. Looking through websites and photo galleries. Reliving a day that I never expected to happen in the first place. My ‘world’ started after the unrest of the ’60s and all I knew was bombings and attacks took place in other countries… to other people.
It was just another morning. I woke up and started my routine. Preparing to go to work CitiMortgage in Fairborn Ohio, but I noticed something on the TV that looked out of place. Was that the Pentagon… is it on fire? I’ve got a few minutes before I need to leave, I’ll wait to hear what happened. Then the Today show cut back to New York and I saw my first image of a burning World Trade Center. Matt Lauer and Katie Curic were saying something about a plane hitting a tower, then another one. The Pentagon had also been attacked. All I could think was what the hell is going on here.
At this point, I don’t think I had ever heard of Osama Bin Laden or Al-Qaeda but as was the case with most of the country in the coming days, I was about to learn.
I felt sorrow, seeing the planes fly into the towers, over and over on TV. Hearing rumors of people jumping out of windows in desperation to escape a burning tower to only meet their same sad fate in a different manner. Knowing that everything changed, I felt anger and a sense of betrayal of what I had always believed. Terrorisms goal is to terrorize, to make you fear them. In this case, on this day there were too many other things to feel to be afraid.
Growing up in the Midwest, I have the quirk of being a ‘trusting person’. I think that for the most part people are good. They may make mistakes, but generally speaking I’d never seen evil in a manner like I did that day. It changed the world, it changed the country, it changed me.
Ten years later, I still look at the pictures, see the videos, hear the sounds and am moved. I still hold back a tear for not only those that perished that day at the hands of evil but for those that survived them and must go on without them. I’m still angry, I still feel betrayed. I still feel so many things. But, I have a simple message to those out there that still wish to terrorize, I’m still not afraid of you… and so you have failed.
To those touched directly by the attack, you were then and will always remain in my thoughts and prayers. Your sorrow must be deeper than anything any of us could ever understand. Those of us who were indirectly affected can only hope for a day in the future that we can regain at least some of the innocence we had on 9/10/01.
I’m just sayin…
Steve Stackman
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