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(Warning, if you do not want to read somber reflections about 9/11 and my thoughts and feelings about it then and now you may want to just skip this post and wait for my next update. Thanks and have a great day.)
Do you remember where you were? I do. I was, surprise surprise, sleeping. My boyfriend called me and told me that America was being attack. I was confused as he told me what had happened. I turned on the tv and watched in shock and horror as smoke billowed out of the Twin Towers. I listened in shock as news came in about the Pentagon and Somerset County, PA. I could only imagine the fear those people went through and were going through. The tears wouldn’t stop flowing even when I wasn’t staring at the tv. I was glued to my tv for days. It got to a point where my boyfriend told me to stop watching because I was depressed and upset all the time. I think this was around the time I really stopped paying attention to the news, period. Nothing good comes from it.
I’m still in shock today how two big beautiful buildings are just gone in a matter of minutes. How so many lives ended in the blink of an eye. How people can hate other people so much that they’d do something so horrible to them. Yes, I’m of the camp that wishes we could all just get along. Yes, I know that will never happen, but I still wish it. Now this next paragraph is in reference to a incidence that happened this morning between me and a foreign acquaintance. You are free to skip it, but I thought it was related to today so I am going to tell you about it.
So it’s kind of funny, sometimes I pop onto Yahoo chat to check out the chatrooms when I am bored, and I’ve made acquaintances with several people over the years. Today one of those acquaintances attacked me out of the blue. I hadn’t talked to him in about 6 months to a year and he left me an offline in Arabic picking on 9/11 and the people who suffered. Well you know I went on the defense and messaged him back some not so nice words. He responded in Arabic again. This is when I knew my words weren’t getting through and he was one of the guys I usually just said hi to when he said hi and made quick small talk with because his English isn’t the best. Usually I would just let this go and move on, but for some reason I couldn’t today. This wasn’t some accidental insult because he didn’t know the language or my culture, this was a direct insult to me because he knew I was American. I couldn’t stop asking myself “why attack me"? I have always been nice to him, even if we couldn’t really carry on an in-depth conversation. Simple fact, he attacked me because I’m American, and I’m sure he attacked me because I’m a female and he didn’t think I’d fight back. Yeah, he doesn’t know me so well when I get bothered. It may not have made sense but I went to Google Translate and I typed my words to him in Arabic and sent it to him. I guess he caught on to what I was doing because he all of a sudden knew good English. And so our conversation went back and forth like that. Me in Arabic, him in English. He apologized for what he had said and for “tenderly” calling me a fat ugly girl. Yeah, when he said that, I couldn’t help thinking back to Elementary school where kids would call each other the obvious when they knew they didn’t have anything else to stand on. *rolls eyes* Yeah I told him I didn’t respect him any more and that I honestly saw him no better than being a terrorist and that I don’t speak to terrorists. This must have struck a nerve in him and made him realize what he had done. He apologized again and promised never to speak to me again. This conversation had me wondering. Were the ones who attacked us always bad? Did they always have hatred in their heart? Or were they like this guy who until today was very nice and then suddenly wasn’t. What did it take for those men to give up their lives to cause such horror to others? What were they promised in the afterlife? If they weren’t promised that would they have done what they did?
So today is just a rather odd day. It’s still clear and sunny as it was 10 years ago. We’ve gone through many things as individuals, as a country, and as a planet as a whole. We’re all 10 years older and 10 years wiser, hopefully. And yet 9/11 still feels like it was just yesterday. It’s something none of us will ever forget. And I don’t care to hear about conspiracy theories that the president knew about it. I have a friend who believes it and got mad at me when I told him I didn’t believe in that. I am not up for debating what did or didn’t happen or who knew and didn’t know about what was happening. Do I think Bush knew “something” was up? Sure. Do I think he knew the full extent of what was going to happen? No, not really. But this post was just to reflect and remember what happened. Something I never though would happen in the US did and it could happen again. It changed all our lives forever in more ways than one, and that just can’t be ignored. And I’d like to also say that we need to remember it wasn’t just the Twin Towers attacked. It took forever to find an image that reflected this. Many lives were taken elsewhere as well. Maybe it wasn’t as many as the towers, but in my eyes, any lives taken is one life to many. So let’s remember them all. Let’s remember the ones in the Pentagon. Let’s remember the brave souls on the plane that saved the day. Let’s remember the firefighters who bravely gave their lives to say others. And of course let’s also remember all the lives lost overseas by the brave men and women who are fighting for us in hopes that we will never have to go through a 9/11 ever again.
I’ll see you in the next post. Take care until then. Bye for now.
Proud American To The Very End,
Michelle
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