I was a junior in high school. We heard rumors of an attack right after second period ended. The kids who had worked on our in school television news thing had seen something. We heard nothing official until right before third period.

An announcement came over the loudspeakers right before our news. It told us that planes had been hijacked and crashed into the World Trade Center. We were instructed to carry on as usual and teachers were instructed to not turn on the televisions. 

I then took a religion test.

Next we went to US History. Our teacher was angry about the ban on television. We listened to the radio the entire class. No class has ever been so silent and attentive. It didn’t seem real. With just the radio it felt like it could have been a play or movie where we were in the 1930s. 

Then the second tower fell. 

I just recall a feeling in the myself that can best be describe as emptiness. Like a black hole had opened up inside of me. Nothing made sense. Without being able to see the destruction, the radio was so much worse. So much worse. I imagined the building falling over and crushing everything next to it. I feel too numb to cry.

The rest of the school day is a blur. Most teachers try to make us do work and ignore our pleas to watch the news. They make an announcement after lunch for anyone with family in NYC or who were traveling by plane from Boston to come to the office if they need to call family.

My Spanish teacher, last period, lets us watch the news the entire time. Seeing makes it more real, but easier to cope with than not knowing what was happening. 

I go to cross-country practice after school. I don’t remember anything about that. I only remember going home and watching the news for the next 6 hours before bed.

The thing that really stuck out to me the days after the attacks was the lack of planes in the sky. The park we ran in for practice is right next to a small airport. They had become part of nature to us. Not seeing or hearing any planes was so weird, I cannot even explain. I just know it made the biggest impression on me.

9/11 never felt truly real to me until recently. I didn’t know anyone who died, I lived in Kentucky and never feared attacks locally, and the scope of the attack was so huge that it was hard to connect with individually.

It was like much like my feelings toward wars. Being in Kentucky I have no fear of a war in my backyard. The war is far off and distant. Thousands are dying and the news just makes you numb at times to the destruction and death.

But every war has its individual stories and images that are shared. An individual soldier or medic or widow of parentless child. These are what always broke my heart and made it real to me. 

I finally cried over September 11 two years ago. I went to a humanities in medicine lunch lecture. The topic was an anthropological study of 9/11 first responders. The quotes were heart breaking. The stories made it feel like it could have been you, even when you were safe in Kentucky. The pictures, the love, the horror.

I sat in that auditorium, a few tears on my face, and I finally had the closure I never knew I needed from the attacks. I understood why I got so angry at politicians, or country musicians, using the memory of that day for personal gain. Why I hated people who used that memory to trump up a patriotism based on fear, anger, and racism. I finally understood what the memory of 9/11 meant to me.

To me remembering 9/11 is to remember innocence. Innocent lives that were lost or forever damaged. The innocence of our country. The innocence that in our warm, safe beds all was right in the world. The innocence and gentleness of the human spirit to rush headfirst into danger in order to help others.

We awoke on September 12, 2001 not to a new world or a changed world. We awoke to the world that we had been blinded to by our innocence. We saw the hunger, poverty, war, terrorism, starvation, and everything else ugly and dark in this world for the first time for what it truly was - an attack on all humanity, not just the poor or weak.

Please take a moment today to remember the victims and heroes of September 11, 2001. Then please take a moment to remember all of the fallen soldiers of the US Military, before and after 9/11. Then take a moment to think of all the victims in the world of terrorism, hunger, poverty, war, and any type of abuse in the entire world, including your own town.

Lastly, take a moment and think of the people we have deemed our enemies. Something is wrong in this world and continual killing and hatred and fighting does nothing to truly solve our problems.

I don’t believe in a god or religion, but I pray for the world. I pray for understanding and compromise to replace arguments and bombs. I pray that my children will someday live in a world where hate and fear are replaced by love and acceptance. I pray for all of humanity.