Before and After September 11th

The in-class 15-minute assignment was to write about how an event in your life changed things by creating a before and after image. I turned the story into my second personal narrative assignment for the class- so it includes what I came up with in those 15 minutes but it is like any other paper in that I ended up spending lots of time on it, incorporating previous work. 

My writing:

Before the September 11th attacks, I had never seen a building on fire with smoke billowing out. Before the attacks, my mother used to take the subway everywhere.

After the September 11th attacks, I saw what a building on fire looked like. After the attacks, my mother became afraid of bombs on the subways and started biking everywhere, no matter the weather.

Before, my dad made almost all his documentaries inside the United States. Before, my family was inseparable. After, he started making two and three month trips to the Middle East. After, my family was torn apart. My dad was missing from the picture all of a sudden. My parents love became strained and weak and the road to their divorce began.

Before, I didn’t have terrifying nightmares. After, I trembled at the sound of airplanes and reoccurring nightmares of planes hitting my building or buildings collapsing around me began.

Before, I didn’t know what Islamaphobia was. After, I saw a cab driver have his passport thrown in his face by police officers even though he did nothing to deserve it.

Before, Julia Madden’s uncle was alive and well. After, Julia Madden’s uncle was dead.

Before, I never cared much for politics. I had never attended a political rally. After, I was obsessed, and mostly angry. Angry that the Republican party and Bush administration were cheapening what had happened by exploiting it as an opportunity to invade Iraq, a country that had never once attacked Americans. I was disgusted that a political party was holding its convention in a place it was very unpopular only to milk the tragedy of September 11th to stir fear and promote warfare. I started to go to a lot of political rallies in New York after the attacks. At one rally, I saw a group of women whose husbands had died in the towers. They all had matching signs that read “Our grief is not a cry for war.” I could not have said it better myself.

Before the attacks, my mom had not been a grief consoler before. The neighborhood where she worked in Union Square was like what it is today, full of musicians and artists and farmers markets. In the weeks following the attacks, however, she grief counseled dozens, if not hundreds of people who had lost loved ones less than a mile away. The neighborhood was silent, full of cries and people hugging. It was not full of music or art. Trees, fences, benches and bulletin boards throughout Union Square park were all covered in Missing posters.

Before, I had never seen so much public agony. After, a little boy asked me if I had seen his big sister who worked in the North Tower.  It pained me to tell him but I had not. He moved on to the next person nearby. Everyone was going to give him the same answer until he realized his sister was gone for good. It wasn’t fair. She didn’t deserve to be gone for good.

It all began in school. Natasha, my teacher, has us all gather in the meeting area of our classroom for an announcement. She had heard from the radio in the lobby that a jet airliner had hit the world trade center. She said she was not sure of the details but they were getting word of a second plane. “Bad pilot”, I said. “No, Sam. This is an attack”.

“But nobody would want to attack us”, I replied.

“I wish that were true” she said.

Some of my friends began getting picked up from school. My mother and older brother arrived and I refused to leave. I didn’t want to go. I wanted to stay and hang out with my friends. The teachers were too depressed to teach. For the 10 year old me, that meant I could chat with friends and have fun.

My mom said she would take my hungry brother to get something to eat nearby, and then come back to pick me up. Lunch came around and I remember joking with friends about what had happened downtown in the lunch line. We made fun of the pilots for being stupid.

When my mother returned, she had heard about a plane crash outside Pittsburgh. My brother was worried about my grandfather who lives there. He told me I had to come home with them, and we left.

Before 9/11, I had never seen my brother so serious. He was 12- two years older than me. As it happened, his age difference was more obvious to me than it had ever been before. He knew more than me- he understood things I did not. He knew what terrorism was. He knew why they attacked New York City and why they wanted Americans dead.

Before the attacks, I had never heard the word terrorist.

My brother Nate knew that the buildings had collapsed by the time I was picked up and by the time we got home. I think he and my mother assumed that I knew this, too. All I knew was that a plane crashed into one of the twin towers. In the back of my mind, I still through it was nothing more than an accident.

My mom was able to contact my grandfather when we got home, which reassured by very worried brother. When we arrived in my living room, we turned on the TV.

Before the attacks, I had never seen Nickelodeon re-routed to be CNN. I had never seen every channel covering one event. The footage was on constant repeat- the buildings collapsed over and over again. I was shocked. I could not believe they were gone. It looked like war.

My babysitters son could not get into Queens, where he lived, because they closed the bridges. He could not call his mom because there was no cell phone service. So, my mom insisted that he sleep over at our house. He had only slept over for fun before. This was different. He had to. He was a best friend of my brother and I, only a year older than my brother Nate.

Nate was serious, but I have to admit, I was pretty excited after watching the buildings collapse. It is disturbing to me now, looking back. But destruction and death was foreign to me. I had never seen so many people so wrapped up in one thing. It shouldn’t have excited me, but it did. Jay T and I went to Central Park and stood on top of some benches atop a hill. We saw black smoke rising. I felt like I was part of something bigger than myself. My excitement was immature and ignorant, but intoxicating nonetheless.

The childlike thrill wore off the next morning. When I woke up and went out to the living room, it looked, outside the window, like it was snowing or something. I went up to the window and saw papers flying through the air and pieces of ash covering cars. There was smoke traveling through New York. I couldn’t believe it. I got serious, now. I knew what was going on was real- and I accepted for the first time that there were not just bad pilots in those planes. The New York Times devoted a massive headline to the event- “U.S ATTACKED”, the front page read. Inside, a picture of a man jumping. I was still mesmerized by the event, but no longer excited.

Later that day, my mom and I went to the local corner store to get some groceries. Everyone on the street was silent. There were missing posters on buildings. It was scary. I started to feel fear in a way I never had before.

Once planes were allowed in the air again, everyone would look up at them with unease. The whole city was in anticipation-mode. At night, I would lie in bed crying, terrified out of my mind when the booming sound of a low-flying plane bounced off the alleyway outside my room. I still have reoccurring nightmares about the day. Sometimes I am trying to get out of North Tower knowing it is about to collapse like I have come from the future. Sometimes I am in midtown running from collapsing buildings.

Writing about the experience has always helped me make sense of it all. To assess the effect it has had on my life, smaller than many in Manhattan. Over 422,000 people have been diagnosed with 9/11 related PTSD.