As I sit down to write my thoughts about this day, I feel paralyzed. It somehow seems frivolous, almost disrespectful, to write about September 11, as if words on a blog cannot quite capture the emotions, the enormity of the event.
Many around me see today as just another day.
Not me.
While I stood there and watched in real time as a plane hit the second tower, I knew that something previously unthinkable had happened, and even though I didn't know exactly what had happened, I knew my world would change. As the day's events unfolded and we watched as victims jumped to their deaths and the towers collapsed and later the mass debris enveloped the city, we all mourned for lost lives and for our country. But the real tragedy of the day unveiled itself later in the week as we heard stories of those who lost their lives or those who lost loved ones.
Therein lies the tragedy of 9-11. Not that our country was attacked, though it was. Not that we no longer felt secure, although we could never be as secure as we thought we were. But rather because people lost their husbands, wives, daughters, sons, brothers, sisters, friends, lovers.
While the rest of us on September 12, 2001, returned to work, quiet and thoughtful though that return might have been, we were fortune enough to be able to return to our lives without the heartache of mourning a lost loved one, without having to relive the horror of watching from the streets as the towers collapsed, without the lonely waiting and wondering.
The fact of the matter is that although 9-11 deeply impacted me, what I felt was only a reflection of what those in the midst of the debris must have felt.
It's the individual human suffering that breaks my heart. It is for those who mourned real losses that I believe we should further commemorate this day. Not for those who lost their lives or those of us who lost our sense of ease and naivete. But for those who mourned real losses.
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