Friday, September 11, 2009

Impact


I spent my morning drive in tears, listening to Johnny Dare and his crew discuss 9/11 and re-broadcast reports from NYC that morning. One was a re-broadcast of a local NYC radio station interviewing a woman, who lived in the city, after the first plane hit (before there was even an idea it was other than a horrible accident), and during that interview the second plane hit. Over the terrified sounds of this woman's screams you could hear the explosions and the multitude of sirens and emergency vehicles.

They also spoke with a man who told his story of being in the WTC when it was hit, and the 50+ minutes it took to descend the stairs to get out: how at the bottom the police lined up to cordon off from view the bodies of people who had jumped or fallen out the windows and splashed across the grounds below.

September 11, 2001 and the days immediately following it were the most harrowing, soul-destroying, and in one way uplifting (simply seeing how this country, and the world as a whole, came together immediately following this abomination) of my life to date, and I hope never to surpass them.

I learned that day that I am capable of feeling hatred, actual hatred, for a fellow human being ... which has been a sobering experience for me, but which also hasn't changed all that much in the subsequent years.

Maybe someday I'll be a better person, but I am still so bitter that I just can't forgive. Yet I do hold out hope.

I flew out of NJ, directly over ground zero, two years ago on a trip back home, and the fact that it was still a gaping hole in the landscape just about dropped the bottom out of my heart. I was glued to the window of my plane, tears streaming, inarticulate with grief.

I simply do not understand how anyone can take the gift of Free Will to such an extreme.

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