9/11

[Gs172003]

I'm sorry

 

[VioletButterfly]

I, too, responded to the other post, but in a different way. I was actually asleep and my fiancé called me from an event he was at to ask me if what he'd heard was true. I turned on the TV to see it all play out and was horrified and riveted. I cried and was devastated for months as I watched us, as a nation, grieve, pull together, accept the unacceptable, and slowly move back to the new normal. I am still unable to watch any of the footage without going to pieces.

I'm getting upset writing so will close out in tears, praying for the world to figure this out and stop the carnage. VB

 

[BlackbirdSinging]

September 11th 2001 is more than a trigger for me. It's one of my traumas. I felt today coming last week when PTSD anxiety and depression blindsided me leaving me in moments staring blankly and picking my fingers anxiously pulling off my own skin literally. I won't tell the whole story here. I'm trying to be distracted today. Or maybe I'm suppressing it since memories flooded me and spilled tears down my face when I woke up this morning.

I will say this. I must remember gratitude to get through the emotions. I will say my brother is still alive. I will say he lives in New York and was living in Manhattan then. He worked as it came back to mind in one of many phone conversations with my dad that day at his new job. On the top floor of tower 1.

I will say that I saw an image of a man whose name and face I still don't know was falling from one of the towers. He fit my brother's description. If by chance it wasn't my brother I watched in absolute devastating horror while talking on the phone with my dad as the buildings fell slipping crashing to the ground like a mind bending mistake in reality and perception. I thought I just watched my brother die. Live up close and in real time.

I feel guilty that I'm traumatized by September 11th 2001. My brother is still alive. Many many many almost 3,000 people didn't survive. Their families forever changed. And I'm traumatized?

I had taken my kids to school. I called the school to inform them of what happened. I picked my kids up and while I told them about the terror attack I tried to keep their day normal. Even though I cried the entire day evening and night.

It would be 24 hours. Of calling. Twenty four hours of calls not going through. Twenty four hours of not knowing. Holding my breath. Shaking. Scared to hope. Wondering how I possibly could hope. How my brother could possibly still be alive. Twenty four hours before the call finally went through. When the phone was finally answered. When I could finally let the sobs take over. This time with relief. Kind of. The eerie sobering sounds of the fire fighters distress alarm calling out in the background of the phone call on my brother's end. It echoed with the sound on my TV.

What I did with that experience was buy a tall white candle in glass. Every year I lit it when I woke up and when the sun went down I'd blow it out. I'd light that candle every year for years until the wax burned completely away.

September 11th 2002 I took my kids cards and flowers to our local police station and presented the officer behind the glass with a card and some flowers. I shook his hand. I offered my condolences for the fallen police officers in New York Pennsylvania and at the Pentagon. I won't forget the look on his face. And I took my kids the other card and the rest of the flowers to the fire station where I repeated my actions. In both offices thanking these men for risking their lives in our community.

I didn't tell the whole story or what it made me feel here. That's where I was though. That's some of what I felt. And each year it puts distance between but, the memories remain burned into me.

 

[Forgetful]

I was back in bed after getting my youngest onto the school bus. At that time I was driving for my dad's limo service. He was away so my brother and I had been out driving the night before and my cousin took the early morning rides. A friend called after the first plane it. I thought it had been an accident so I rolled over to get some sleep. Within a couple of minutes my sister in law called. At that point I figured I might as well get up to see what the fuss was all about. This was just after the second plane hit.

I turned on the TV downstairs and I was horrified by what I saw. H was working in NY that morning so I tried to call to make sure he was ok, but the call wouldn't connect. Then I tried to call my dad, again no luck. Then I tried my cousin because his ride was in the city, no luck. By that time the first tower fell. I was in shock scared and crying. I went back upstairs and shook my brother awake. I told him what was happening and made him come down because I just couldn't watch it alone any more.

We sat watching in silence with tears streaming down our faces for a couple of hours, all the while trying to make those phone calls. By then all roads, bridges and tunnels had been closed so I wondered if\when H and my cousin would get home. I couldn't watch anymore so I made myself keep busy cleaning etc.

My oldest was in middle school and she got home about 1/2 hour before my youngest. The middle school and highschool ride the bus together so I knew she'd have heard. I grabbed a chair and sat outside waiting for her because I knew she'd be upset and have questions. We stayed there talking until her sister got home. Shortly after H called. He was ok but unsure when he'd be able to get home. Around dinner time my cousin got home and late that night H got home.

A very sad and scary day.

 

[Glo809]

Greetings

It was an election primary day in Boston, I was the clerk for Ward 4 Precinct 3 a position that I held for years.

After the news came out there was alot speculation if the primary would be canceled, it wasn't. My polling place was in Back Bay near the Hancock tower.

We did our job, though very few voters showed up after the news broke.

 

[Anarchy]

It was late afternoon, I was supervising site investigation drilling (a really shit project that just about got me fired - very long story) when a colleague (a narc, younger than me, who's since died) rang me and said. I think they got some narcissistic feed out of spreading the news.

I thought "f*ck it" and went home and switched the TV on.

a day or two later, I was chatting with a guy who captained a desk in the admiralty... and we were both saying "for F*ck's sake, Afghanistan! the only imperial invader that ever held that place was Alexander the Great, and even that didn't last for long. Every other empire that tried to hold the place couldn't and was badly damaged or even destroyed by trying (The British Empire was one that was damaged, in the 1890s)"

Looking back, What an insight the speeches by Rumsfeldt, Cheyney and Bush The Dumber, gave into the psychie of believers in american exceptionalism and manifest destiny.

the claims to know "god's will" and to be "doing god's work". That is scary.

I visited the united state a few months later, and the only one of the dozens of security guards that I passed, who actually looked at me and used common sense and judgement, was a black guy manning the door and metal detector at the Liberty Bell.
All the rest were totally clueless.

 

[Deleted member 12723]

I was home alone and just got my kids off to school and my husband called and told me, I was scared and yet remained glued to the tv. It took a while before my fear went away. I could not watch the people jumping out of the buildings yet I continued to watch the news.

 

[ElleKaye]

I was 15 and in high school sitting in 5th period (spanish) when it happened (I was on block scheduling so 5th period was the same as 1st period). We heard there was a plane crash in NYC and that a plane had hit one of the towers and I remember thinking (what idiot flies that low and, how could you not see one of those towers???) when we got to 6th period (the whole school had SRT-student resource time, like a 90 min study hall) the 2nd plane had already hit so we just watched everything from then LIVE, we watched people jumping out and watched the towers crumble in real time...no one did any work that day, we all went to our different classes and watched the news in each one, same with lunch...my friend lost her father, he was in the 2nd tower :(

 

[EmmaOwl]

scary listening to fighter jets flying above all night that night.

The sound of fighter jets is one of my biggest... triggers I guess. It is a sound that I feel something along the lines of - this is America! We don't need fighter jets HERE. We send fighter jets THERE. (Wherever that may be.)
I have trouble with all kinds of planes now. Whenever there's one in hearing distance, in my head I think "go away go away go away." And, no big news, it generally does, safely.
I hate the irrational thoughts I feel I am forced into; this is one of my worst ones.

 

[EmmaOwl]

Ive never spoke about that and dont know why im typing it now. I feel its rather disrespectful of those that died and are directly impacted to say I went through anything other than a panic attack.

I feel this way sometimes too. I live further away now and I had a doctor (NOT a psychiatrist) ask me "Which building were you in?" and I said "Well, neither." And I felt like she was criticizing me for not...something. Like my experiences are somehow lesser. I was exposed to a lot of televised footage that hurt me just as much as what it was like "on the ground" - in some cases more, because it was repeated so many times. They could not have shown that footage anymore than they did. And it seemed somehow necessary to keep on top of the news all that day, and all that night. What if something NEW happened and we slept through it? It didn't, not really, not in the way that we feared, but how were we to know? So they kept playing what they had, and we kept watching what they played. It was the ultimate in media overkill literally.
Your experience... Well look, everyone who watched or listened or even read the news was there in some ways and it hurt many people with PTSD or those prone to it - or those who never thought about it before. Over the years there have been more and more studies, more evidence that otherwise-healthy people have developed full blown PTSD ALL across the U.S., concluding it has affected people more than some other national tragedies in the past, because the television footage was so vivid, drastic, dramatic, definitely overly-thorough... Everyone has a "right" to trauma from that day. (Or any other day, for that matter, but I'm attempting to stay on topic here.)

 

[Richie]

I walked into a military hospital and thought there was a movie on tv. Then I felt the eeriness in the room as I realised EVERYONE was watching it. It wasn't a movie, it was the news!

 

[EmmaOwl]

I walked into a military hospital and thought there was a movie on tv. Then I felt the eeriness in the r...

I felt similarly.
Even when I knew it was happening, the tv footage still looked like a movie.
I went back and re-read everyone's comments on this thread and cried a little - and "I don't cry!". That's a thank you for everyone posting here.