stacy was here (and probably spinning....)

 

 

eye

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Stacy Was Here :
Back at the Beginning

Tuesday, September 11, 2001

I woke up this morning feeling tired, and just blah... but I drug my lazy ass out of bed and went to ballet anyway, though I decided just to watch. I was being self-indulgent, and thought that I would just let the morning be relaxing. When I got there, a girl told me a plane had crashed into the WTC, and it registered in plane-crash mode, but nothing larger. I had no idea when I woke what the ramifications of consciousness would be today.

By the time ballet was half way through, two more planes had crashed - another into the WTC again, and one into the pentagon. All of a sudden my self-indulgent, lazy morning had shattered into a million pieces, and my mind was 500 miles away from the rest of me, consumed with an unspeakable sense of desperate loss for all the people who were killed as they went about an ordinary morning just like mine. No one expects to die in a plane crash, least of all when they're sitting in an office building. By the end of ballet class, my school was shut down completely. Classes were cancelled. We met in a room where a couple hundred people sat in stunned silence as the news replayed the footage over and over. My god, I thought. This looks just like a movie. I started to cry, but it was the worst bunch of tears that have ever come out of my eyes. How can you grieve when there's no clear person to grieve for? They say the casualties will reach into the tens of thousands. Can I shed that many tears, so that each soul that perished can know how much this tragedy is felt by us all?

In retrospect, the grief I have experienced for the deaths of loved ones seems peaceful to me now, in the wake of such an unmerciful sacrifice. This grief is horrible because for me it has no face, but it is not far away or remote. It carries an astronomical load of fear and apprehension, and it bears the question: What happens now?

The sad thing is, we've all witnessed so many huge catastrophes on TV and movie screens that this day is sort of a surreal testament to our desensitization. Mostly I feel numb, and no matter how much of the news I watch, there is part of me that still keeps saying This Can't Be Real! And then there's the child in me, screaming, wondering how this could happen. These things just aren't supposed to happen. Not now, not here. Not to us. Not to anyone.

There is talk of retaliation, and it makes me want to cry even more. The more we let our anger take over, the more likely we will be to get into a war. 10,000 people is a lot of people. War will only cause more death. Anger will only cause more violence. I am so emotionally tired right now that I can't even think of anything else, but I can't watch TV anymore, and I can't talk about it. It makes my heart heavy to think of the dark days that are ahead of us. Hopefully our government will have the sense not to endanger any more human life. Somehow I doubt it.

Tonight I will curl up in my room and cry. I don't know anyone in New York, or anyone who works in the WTC or the Pentagon. But I know grief. And I will cry for every parent whose children are missing, for every child whose brothers or sisters or aunts or uncle or mothers or fathers will never come home again. And I will cry because I am afraid. And I will cry because I am lucky, that everyone in my family is safe right now, this very moment, even though they're far away. I only wish that everyone in New York could say the same.

posted by Cat Named Eggroll @ 7:05 PM   0 comments

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home

Previous Posts

Twitter Updates

    follow me on Twitter

    My Facebook Profile

     


    My Flickr Photos



    Powered by Blogger

    blogger counter