7 years ago, September of 2002, I was probably sitting in my dorm room on the 12th floor, Broadway and 10th St.
8 years ago, I wasn’t in Manhattan. I was in high school, Princeton Junction, New Jersey, fall of senior year.
At about 9:12 I was in an upstairs classroom of the science wing of my high school. Health Class, Senior Year. The principal of the school came on the PA and made an announcement.
It was something about a plane crashing into the World Trade Center. The sentences hit me then as nonsense. They just bounced off at me. I turned to the person next to me, and we looked at each other, confused.
A girl from our class stepped into the hallway to make a phone call. She seemed upset.
I still didn’t understand what was going on.
Not everyone in high school had a cell phone in 2001. Now I think there must have been a long line at the office. Class stopped, and we all just sat there, talking. I don’t remember about what.
I don’t know if what I ‘remember’ is what happened.
We still had regular classes. Perhaps it was just to keep everyone orderly. Some teachers let us leave to go into the commons area, or watch CNN, which was playing in the theater.
Footage of planes crashing into the sides of the buildings, over and over again.
Everyone was in a daze. At lunch, which lasted three periods, I think we played cards as usual. Several classmates were using this as an opportunity to get into angry political arguments. None of my friends seemed visibly upset. Later I found out that many of them were upset.
I didn’t lose anyone that day. My extended family’s was still scattered around the city at the time. Two of my uncles and one of my aunts work in Manhattan. I was lost in my brooding and never explicitly worried about them—I knew they all worked far from what would later be known as Ground Zero.
7 years, 6 months ago. March 2002. I was in the guidance counselor’s office after yelling at someone in gym class. After answering a dozen questions, I confessed that I had been feeling upset. And yes, I’d had suicidal thoughts. They were quite violent and involved using a car battery to create an explosion that would blow myself up. I said this whimsically. It was a silly idea, right?
The guidance counselor told me that it was understandable, given recent events, that some people were still feeling upset or depressed: just from watching the news, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. To myself, I thought, no, that’s not it. I’ve felt worthless and in pain much longer than that.
I was told to take a seat in the office. I don’t remember much after that. Later, I found myself in the hospital. I don’t remember who took me there.
Lying in a bed, I found myself face to face with the most beautiful lady psychiatrist I’ve ever seen in my life. She had a wonderful smile, but one that made me feel so embarrassed, talking to her under these circumstances. I was released later that day.
Through these 8 years, it’s always made feel ashamed that on September 11th, 2001, I was upset for the wrong reasons. I was upset about things far less important than the huge loss of human life. It served, to my depressed brain, as only a temporary and incomplete distraction.
What a selfish creature I am, I thought 8 years ago, staring at the moving images of fire on rubble, dust and sweat on people on foot across the Brooklyn bridge, like prisoners marching out of the pit of a volcano.
