Ten years ago tonight I was at the Michael Jackson tribute concert with my mom watching MJ perform before heading home from Madison Square Garden around 2am. We missed our connecting train and didn’t get home until 4am, and I went to my 8th grade classes the next day. When the planes hit the twin towers, our teachers were told not to tell us what had happened. Kids were being pulled out of school. My math teacher couldn’t teach, she just kept running to the TV to see what was happening while she waited for her son, who worked in the towers, to call her. I heard a rumor that a small plane had crashed into the Empire State Building. When I got home around 3pm, the World Trade Center was gone and I sat alone in front of my TV watching it happen over and over until my mom got home from work and joined me. It’s weird to think how much is different in the world ten years later.

While walking around Ground Zero on my way home from work yesterday (my office is a few blocks from there) I couldn’t help feeling like a sort of stranger to the events. The only analogy I could come up with is that I felt the same way I feel when I learn about the scars of someone I love: I know the story, I feel deeply sympathetic because I love this person, I even feel like I was there and shared the moment the scar formed, but ultimately I wasn’t there and I didn’t feel the same pain. I wasn’t in NYC. I was just watching NYC on TV. No one I know died in the attacks, so I wasn’t affected on a personal level. I was only affected on an emotional level, a patriotic level like 99.9% of Americans. Somehow this feels less meaningful to me, like if I were to go to Ground Zero today I’d be tremendously out of place. Having a ticket to see the memorial next week feels strange and I’m scared of what I’ll feel there, but my boyfriend wants to go. I’m not as keen on going. I can’t fathom the feelings of those who were there or those who lost someone or even just those who lived in NYC at the time. In the face of tragedy I feel sadness, but primarily I feel respect for those who have some deeper reason to mourn. It’s as if I’m unworthy of mourning the deaths of strangers. The only lasting effect 9/11 has had on me is a perpetual fear of low-flying planes - a fear that has been forced to subside now that I live so close to an airport - and the shock of anxiety I feel every time a large number of police cars and fire trucks speed by me. I live with the constant expectation that one day it will be my turn to witness some tremendous tragedy in Manhattan. In the meantime, my emotions feel cheap and programmed.

I put a ribbon on the gates of St. Paul’s church near Ground Zero but I didn’t know what to write on it. I read some ribbons, which felt voyeuristic. All of them had messages for specific people, or messages wishing for world peace, and neither was what I had to say. I wrote RIP, tied the ribbon around the gate, and left.