7 years ago today

Seven years ago today, I was interning at Westinghouse Government Services, LLC .  I had just turned 21 and was counting down the days until I went back to Ohio State to begin my senior year.  The weather was beautiful - bright sunshine and blue skies.  There was definitely a hint of fall in the air, but summer was still hanging on.  I was emailing back and forth with friends from college as I worked on some of my menial tasks during my final days as an intern.  That fall, my friends and I had a 5 bedroom house lined up and we were all talking about coming back a little early to soak up the last bit of summer and to enjoy ourselves before we got bogged down with homework, classes and craziness.  I remember sitting at my desk at work, and one of the IT contractors coming down and asking if I'd heard what happened.  I hadn't, but quickly went online to find out what was going on.  The internet was extremely slow.  He then proceeded to tell me that they were "attacking us with our own planes".  Not knowing what was going on, I went to find a TV.  It was there that we saw the first images of 9-11, the Towers on fire and the mass confusion that was following it.  Was it an accident? Was it intentional?  What was going on?  My first thought was to go and find my dad, who  also works where I was interning.  He didn't know what was happening either.  I called my mom, who worked in downtown Pittsburgh, their building was evacuating because at this point, no one knew the scale of the attack.  The questions were infinite and the shock was apparent.

Because I was working in a government facility that also handled nuclear energy, we were given the option to go home.  Again, this was part of the confusion as everyone tried to process the exact ramifications of what was going on.  When I got home, I turned on the television and was riveted by the images that I saw.  The scene that was playing out was one of such indescribable tragedy, yet I couldn't pull myself away.  I saw the Twin Towers burning, people running and dust spreading.  The cameras and news crews were capturing everything.  When the first tower fell, they broadcast the dust cloud that rolled down the streets of Manhattan as well as the people who were trying to escape the rubble and the danger.  Before the other tower fell, I saw papers flying and people jumping out of windows to escape the burning and the heat that would have surely killed them.  

Its hard for me to understand what it must have felt like to be living in that moment, experiencing the terror first hand, rather than watching it on TV and reading about it in the newspaper.  It was paralyzing as it seemed like it was happening so far away and that there was little to nothing I could offer these people except thoughts and prayers.  The heros that emerged on that day are truly amazing people and should be honored every day.  

I remember one of the news anchors making an observation that the skies above the United States were quiet today.  When you were outside, it was strange not to hear the sound of an airplane above or seeing the vapor trail of a passing jet.  The country literally had stopped, and everyone was wondering what would happen next.  It made menial tasks and every day life seem so trivial, even as we all struggled back to normal.  Normalcy helped establish that the bad guys were not going to win.  They might have thrown a sucker punch, but we were going to get back up and keep going.

A couple years later, I had the opportunity to visit Ground Zero.  I hate to use the word "visit", which implies that its some sort of tourist attraction.  It clearly was not.  Standing there gave me a feeling that I've never had.  I saw the neighboring buildings with broken and boarded up windows.  I had goose-bumps and a strange feeling in the pit of my stomach.  I can't express the feeling that you get when you stand there and try to process what exactly happened on that exact spot.  When you stand at the edge of the fence and look down into what is left of two engineering marvels, and know that ugliness and close mindedness were what took them down, its almost too much to handle.  The sheer size of the site is insane - knowing how many people were in each building and how many lives were lost.  Everyone respects the site as hallowed ground and the silence as people paid their respects was deafening.  I stood there, saw the cross made out of steel beams, looked at that expansive hole  in the ground, and wondered how someone or something could do this.  Being there brought everything together, the magnitude of the situation and the reason for the war.  I respect those people who say "enough is enough" and I respect those people who say "its time to stop" and I pray for those people who have the courage to fight for our country and stop those who feel that they have a right to destroy something that they have nothing to do with.