I remember the morning.

I was in my room, unemployed and unsure where my next job would be. Turning the TV on hoping for some sort of relief.

There’s no need to explain what happened next, except confusion and uncertainty. Hoping this was somehow stock footage of the last time this happened, until proven otherwise.

Desperate attempts to call or receive calls. Schools closing early. No one to really talk to about what happened or how to even feel.

Expressing deeper feelings weren’t exactly practiced in the family. So at that time, I was not the one to know how to regulate anything that wasn’t positive or joyful for myself or others.

So I was quiet.

Observant of others trying to hold it together, trying to gauge how to express my feelings. Still unsure about how to react, or how to console anyone expressing their anger and confusion, because I didn’t know how to do it for myself.

Maybe I tried, I don’t remember too well.

But I do remember the increase of patriotism. The desire to remain hopeful in the power of humanity that showed up not only after the dust settled. They showed up as it fell.

In a city often known for giving tourists and residents the same loud and abrasive energy, these shouts were different.

Now, they were not only cries for help. There were replies that help was here. It was always there. And if not, it was on the way.

25 years later, and I finally allowed myself feel that repressed sadness, confusion, and fear.

Not that I was incapable all this time, but there is a heavier significance about that day, and the days after.

Maybe because of family ties within the city, or even a family trip to Tower 2 during the summer of 2000, hoping to come back the following year to view and walk into Tower One.

Or maybe because it’s all of that, combined with feeling the collective weight from even the most zany and hilarious friends ready to take arms against those responsible. 

But we all got through it together, in our own ways. No matter how any of us were able to show up or speak up, we had each other then as much as we do now, in a new world that has haunting parallels to this one.

There’s a quote going around from a movie stating “the horrors persist, but so do I.”

Critics and deniers considered, so do we. So does any of us who felt and still feel the pain that day.

And without question, so does New York.

K.P.