Abi: The shift change. [11/30]

It was inevitable that I would talk about September 11th… problem is this subject is such a bitter thing to me that I actually am sick of hearing about it. My reasons for being sickish are purely self-centred, and I’m pretty ashamed to talk about it… but I’ll tell the memories first before I make myself look like a bitch.


When the first plane hit the towers I was asleep, I probably had gone to bed only a few hours before the event. My best friend at the time, Dana (who I hope to talk about later in this challenge), called me up and asked if I’d seen the news about them hitting (she might have said bombing) the World Trade Centre.
I was half asleep, no clue what was going on, and I asked, “again?”
I’m sitting up in bed at this point and going to turn on the news. Dana was explaining what had happened, and I do believe we ended up watching the second plane hit.
I was utterly numb about it, maybe a little panicked. That time in my life was a dark time, and I had very few emotions to spare… but mostly I had no clue how to take this. We were watching history unfold and I could just watch… there was nothing else I could actively do about any of it.


It wasn’t until later that the horror of the events overwhelmed me. I believe it was the next day, the 12th, that marked an anniversary far more prominent to my life than September 11th would ever be… or it might have even been the day after that. I do remember I’d been watching the news ever since the events, I always used to have the news on in the background for noise… but this time around I was hoping for clarity to the situations… and hope.Locally a tornado watch was going on and I remember sitting and standing in the hallway to my room for the duration while watching the news and I was hitting emotional memories from the one year anniversary of tomorrow’s blog topic. It all suddenly collided in my head what had happened. I mean, it’s not to say I didn’t see the body count rising from the beginning, or that I didn’t realise what had happened. My emotional reaction to it had been delayed until too much was building up in this sense of panic and cataclysm.
Suddenly I felt the world was in this epic downward spiral, and I had no control or command, but could only mourn and wait for the dust to settle…


What happened was tragic. What happened afterwards I thought to be even more tragic… but I will not get into my feeling on this subject here.


Now, why I have become bitter, though, is I feel this event overshadows the personal tragedy that I had betokened on the 12th of September, from the year prior. It’s all pretty petty of me, really, but I cannot help but feel hurt that the world will remember this the 11th but never known what the 12th marked.
Of course the 11th was heavier, on so many different scales… on the lost of life, on the changing of America, on the impact to be felt in other nations.
But I-- I would sooner remember the 12th than the 11th… which I’ve been made to feel bad for. I do not invalidate the lives taken than on the 11th, nor to I wish to dishonour those who were victim to any part of the events… but the 11th I hold no real attachment to, I feel disconnected from most of the results of it all… the 12th, however, changed my life forever…