Remembering 9/11: An Experience We All Share

Laying on the bathroom floor with my cheek against the cool tile and tears pooling beneath my face, I had been throwing up for hours and the crying was incessant. I had no idea what was wrong. I didn’t have a fever or a cough. I didn’t eat anything strange or drink too heavily. But for some reason, I could not stop the nausea or the emotional dread. This was nothing I ever felt before – this intense combination of physical and mental malaise. This is how I spent the day and night of September 10, 2001.

I finally decided to call the doctor and make an appointment for the next morning. I was quite certain that pregnancy was not the issue, but I was out of ideas. Scheduled to work in the morning on the northern-most side of Menominee Falls, I let my boss know I would be late.

Getting ready that day was not an easy feat. I was still in this psychological place of impending doom. My stomach was in knots and my eyes were sore from the constant stream of tears, but I was able to get myself together and headed to the clinic.

Driving across town, I listened to Bob and Brian on the radio. It was a typical show of sarcastic banter, until ... it wasn’t. Suddenly there was a quiet and confused mumbling and then they made that unforgettable announcement. One of the DJs shared the news that one of the World Trade Center Towers was hit by an airplane. What a terrible accident, I gasped to myself. I didn't have time to consider the devastation when the same shocked voice relayed that the other tower had also been hit. This was no accident.

The terror in the voices of these familiar, normally humorous radio personalities radiated through the waves as we all simply questioned – what just happened?

I sat in my parking spot, unable to move. And as I was about to leave the car, the Pentagon turned into a target. Just then, without explanation, my stomach pains simply lifted. I was no longer nauseated or dizzy. The crying fits of doom were gone. It felt as though these feelings had risen from me and I was left feeling numb and painless. The sense of consternation I had been feeling the previous 24 hours had been replaced by a sense of relief. I know that sounds odd. And it was most certainly temporary. But it was an honest-to-God sense of release.

I walked into the office and asked the receptionist if she had heard the news. She had not. I told her and the severity clearly was lost on her “oh gee, that’s terrible” reaction. After all, who could really measure the enormity of the situation so quickly?

My doctor examined me and the nurses drew some blood, but nothing was wrong. I was perfectly healthy and definitely not pregnant. I headed to the interstate with all attention to the radio in hopes to gain some understanding. That feeling of release and relief had quickly turned into fear, sadness and confusion. These were appropriate and understandable reactions. What I had been feeling the day before I will never be able to fully explain.

I just couldn’t make it onto the freeway. I turned around before the ramp and headed in the opposite direction. If our world was ending, I was certainly not going to be stuck in traffic or in an office at a job I hated. I went home and fully accepted that I may lose my job, which I did.

Like most Americans, I spent the next days and weeks glued to the TV. At 27 years old, I realized I needed to start the next phase of my life. I wanted a family. I stopped going to the bar regularly and made a home with my boyfriend (now, husband) and his 1 year old daughter. That was to be my life now  – spending it with people I loved. Such a horrible tragedy propelled me to grow up and figure out what I really wanted for my future. Fears of mortality created a hope for a different life.

I will never forget my own personal 9/11 experience. The pain I went through the day prior will always remain a mystery. I have come to the conclusion that there was some precognition happening there – but nothing I will ever really be able to understand or explain.

What I do realize is that we all share this experience. Any of us who were old enough and sane enough to live though that day has their 9/11 story to tell. We can all remember the who, what and where of our lives that day.

As horrifying as those experiences were – it did benefit us in one way. Unity. As different as we all are, as polarized as we have become, we all share this moment in time. We all felt the fear, the sadness, the confusion. I only wish we could bring ourselves together in that familiarity on a regular basis and not only in tragedy. Why must it take disaster, death and destruction for us to recognize ourselves in one another?

Let us spend this occasion – a decade later – remembering how we are alike, how we came together and how in the end, all we really are is human.