Like the majority of Americans, I have spent much of this week reflecting back of September 11, 2001, and everything that has happened in the past 10 years. In the last decade, I have occasionally thought back to that day, remembering where I was, what I was wearing and how the events unfolded as they pertained to me.
I was in my sophomore year of college, five minutes outside of Washington, D.C., and had missed several calls from my mom while in class. I couldn’t get back to her, but I moved onto French class until I finally gave into the sinking feeling in my stomach something was wrong and walked back to the dorm.
It was then, while walking in grey sweatpants, my favorite Maryland lacrosse tshirt and flip-flops, my phone rang again and my mom asked me if I had seen the news and when I said no, she told me there had been terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. By this point, it was hours after the fact and by the time I got to a television, the towers were gone, the Pentagon had a gaping hole, a field in Pennsylvania was obliterated and all that was left were seemingly apocalyptic images.
From high points on campus, you could see smoke from the fires at the Pentagon and, as my New York/New Jersey/Connecticut friends heard from family members, the tragedy began to hit closer to home. As a journalism major and current affairs junkie, I spent the next few days watching the news with morbid curiosity.
This would go on for just over a week until a much smaller, but still devastating, event literally hit home. A tornado ripped through the University of Maryland campus, the first in the DC area in nearly a century, knocking out power, taking down buildings, clearing trees and claiming the lives of two. Selfishly, there were suddenly other things I needed to worry about other than the aftermath of Sept. 11.
Not until this 10-year anniversary, however, did I realize just how much I missed.
I am not ashamed to admit I have been mildly addicted to much of the commemorative programming this week. I have been sucked into shows on National Geographic, History Channel and CNN. I have wept over commercials, musical performances and the national anthem. I don’t even dare listen to “Proud to be an American” or else I will be down for the count.
Anyway, through watching all these shows, I realize how much must have come out during the time I was otherwise occupied. The pieced together timelines, first-hand accounts and sobering realizations as sense began to be made were all new to me. I also was reminded of the patriotism that ensued in the weeks and even years following; a blissful phenomenon all but erased by the economic meltdown and overwhelmingly partisan politics we currently live with.
We are constantly told to never take days for granted and to always tell people who you love how you feel because you never know when you will no longer have the chance. There could be no greater reminder of that than watching the events of Sept. 11 unfold and hearing all the surrounding stories. And so I woke up today, not with grandiose ideas of proclaiming affection or living dangerously, but of simply doing something, anything, I had been putting off.
Because you never know when you will no longer have the chance.
I ended up working the majority of the day, but with just over an hour remaining in the day, I have a letter to write. And tomorrow, a boy to ask out.
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