9/11: How Long Scars Can Hurt

Warning: This piece discusses the traumatic events of September 11th 2001 from the perspective of someone who did not live through the trauma but recounts many images and events from the period. If you are sensitive to this material proceed with caution or not read at all. Take care.

I was born less than a year after 9/11. I didn't witness the tragedy live. I don't have memories of being stunned in class, I don't know anybody who passed away from the attack. I don't know what it felt like to have your entire view of the world shake and crumble beneath your feet. Yet it feels like my entire life has been shaped by one of the worst tragedies in history.

I've had the horrible images of the 2001 September 11th broadcast replayed for me in classrooms and in documentary films. I've lived under the shadow of the War on Terror my whole life. By the time I was very young I'd heard countless stories from teachers, parents, and everyday folks from the time about where they were when the two towers fell. The two towers collapsing was and still is an immense, inescapable trauma that burns through the collective psyche of us all. Even those of us that weren't even conceived at the time.

As we approach the 20th anniversary of 9/11, as my sister lives in New York City, and as I write these words, the anger, the grief, and the image of skyscrapers collapsing and apocalyptic smoke clouds seem as potent now as they did two decades ago.

Many 9/11 documentaries, articles, perspectives, etc. focus on trying to reconcile or explain the trauma, structural failings, political factors, cultural and social fallout, the wars, and so many other factors before, during, and after. I don't think I'm able to do that. As a teenager and a daughter of a politically engaged family, I can recite all of the socio-political factors that led to radicalization and terror groups in the middle east, I can decry the wars I've lived with my entire life, and discuss so many other contributing factors, but I'm no closer to answers than anyone else. If anything I feel more and more befuddled each year.

Because no amount of analysis truly gets to the emotional why. Why did 19 men kill so many people? Why did they put so many innocent people's lives on the line for some cruel agenda? How can the human mind even contemplate crashing planes into buildings and why would it go through with it? How can our anger and grief propel the longest war in our history? Why does death always seem to lead to even more death?

While I can labor constantly on how I can't explain the why and the existential dread it creates, the other side of the coin still exists. Why did a bunch of longshoremen risk their lives right then and there just to save so many strangers? Why do we still protest war crimes, death, and more that came after such an immense tragedy that would fill any feeling person with righteous rage? Why do people travel from thousands of miles away just to pay respects to people they never knew? How can we heal from something so inexplicable, and why do we try?

9/11 is a scar that cut all the way through the United States' sensitive skin to strong bone, torturing generations for decades now, and decades to come. We may never fully heal from it or escape its shadow, but we have to foster light from within it. We can try and find the power to band together and plant love where it seems only hate can thrive.