The 9th anniversary of 9/11 is very near. As that lamented event grows more distant from our present each year, its significance and effect become clearer to me. I was still a child when the attack happened. At 12 years old, I knew something terrible had happened because some malignant characters had killed hundreds of people, but I didn’t understand the magnitude of the effects of that attack. I believed the threat would be temporary. I thought no one was more powerful than the U.S. That the U.S. would simply get them back, maybe even go to war, but would certainly win. I still thought there was a winner in a war.
My experience was a little bit different than most citizens since I had only been in this country for two years. It was enough time for me to allow my identity to adjust to a new life. It wasn’t enough time to get a good sense of who the U.S. was or to integrate significantly with its culture. Still, the U.S. was my new home, and in it lived brothers and sisters of all cultures. It took a really graphic documentary to hit the rock bottom of my emotions. I felt emptiness mixed with pain, fear, shock, and other indescribable feelings. The documentary was a compilation of raw videos from the citizens who witnessed the attack. It was hard to digest the idea that I was not watching a movie, that all the panic and terror shown on the film was completely real. I had never seen someone die right before my eyes. That day I saw dozens. Although not at first hand, the video allowed me to witness how people jumped from the Twin Towers killing themselves in the act. Our natural instinct tells us to fight death. For someone to be forced to suicide seeking a less painful death or in an act of panic is simply inhumane.
As a child, in Mexico, my image of the U.S. was that of an invincible country. When I migrated here and learned a little bit about its history and international status, I discovered that indeed the U.S. is a very powerful nation. However, my concept of this country was limited to the mind of a 12 year old. It is now as an adult that I have a more complex concept of this nation, but this nation was not the same after the terrorist’s attacks of 9/11. That’s why I say I only know the post 9/11 America. Unlike all the adults who lived through the attacks, I don’t feel like I have a point of reference, a time that I could compare to the present. Most of my life in the U.S. has been spent aware of its vulnerability to an attack. Ironically, and ashamed to admit, I had not been as conscious to the fact that all this time we had been at war. Probably because it was not fought in our soil, the media doesn’t give it much coverage, and because no immediate relative was fighting the war. The government says the war is over, but as a journalism student, I’m learning to hear past what is being said. Part of my task and personal goal is to draw conclusions and opinions only after being well informed. As I learn more and take a deeper look into the 9/11 attacks and the war, its significance amplifies and I lament more. It is a tragedy that time can’t leave behind.
My most sincere condolences to the families of all the fallen soldiers throughout this war, and the families of the people who lost their lives September 11, 2001.
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