Did 9/11 Traumatize This Whole Generation?

I've thought about this a lot throughout the years. I know how 9/11 changed my life; my perception of safety, my innocence, and my level of patriotism. But I wonder about the rest of my colleagues and friends. Those who weren't lucky that day; who lost someone they loved.

The other night, Bruno and I watched the movie "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close." I shouldn't review the movie here, although I will say it gave good performances but was otherwise a very flawed movie and padded its impact with some horrific details of that day. I actually felt somewhat emotionally assaulted afterwards, and in my opinion, they used the events of 9/11 to draw a crowd to see the movie. It didn't really honor the subject matter at hand, and I found myself confused and annoyed more often than not. But, I digress (that wasn't the point of this blog post)...

Bruno fell asleep shortly into the movie, and I decided to watch it to the end (hoping it would improve), dragged us both off to sleep after, and then sat up in bed for about two hours, haunted by my own memories of 9/11 and trying to shut out the thoughts of "what must that have been like for victims..?".

Turns out, movies depicting that day fall into the same category, for me, as "Saw" or any Holocaust movies: just don't go there.

I remember that day too vividly. Or, actually, what I remember most are my feelings about it at the time, the way so many memories work. I was 16 years old and starting my Junior Year of high school, just a few months before my family and I were set to move to Albany, NY. It was a hectic time.

I felt confused when my gym teacher told the group as we left class at 9AM that, "a plane crashed into the WTC". What was the WTC, again? World Trade Center... that's right, I had a cousin who worked there - a lot of my Dad's side of the family lived near New York City. But, being about 7 hours away in Baldwinsville, New York, I felt like that was a different country.

At the time I remember thinking, "wow that's an insane plane crash, I wonder if the pilot fell asleep?" Or something along those lines.

They made an announcement on the PA System, saying nothing more except: "We will keep you informed." I still didn't get it. I guess a huge part of me was trying to enjoy the day (which was, famously, one of the prettiest days of the year), and cling to my innocence as something much bigger than I'd ever experienced in my lifetime started to unfold.

By the time I got to my Social Studies class, I knew something was going on, because it was extremely quiet, and incredibly tense. My teacher started the hour by saying, "I am not going to comment on what is happening right now, because I don't have enough information, but let's try to get through class." This sentence let me know:

Something big was happening.
Something really bad.

I shifted nervously with the rest of my classmates all throughout that period until it was time for chorus. Chorus was my biggest class - at least 75 students - and when I walked into the room, it felt like stepping into an alternate universe. On the TV screens above our heads (the chorus room was a sort of media center in the building, filled with recording equipment, mics, TVs and radios), I saw two burning buildings, and in glancing around the room saw that my fellow classmates were either in tears or staring in shock at the Television. No one was talking, except in a whisper, but the whole room felt ...Loud. Our director said nothing. I think she must have told us we would not be singing that day - I can't remember. Everyone was lost in our seats, not knowing what to do, therefore doing nothing.

I found my seat, next to my friend Justine, who was usually a very happy and bubbly person but her face was white as she whispered to me, "four acts of terrorism have been carried out in the past two hours." Then she ticked them off: Two planes into the WTC. Another into the pentagon. Another crashed in a Pennsylvania field. We were under attack - on our own soil; in what felt like our own back yard.

This had always been one of my biggest fears growing up, and panic rose in my chest. I looked up at the TVs and watched, with the entire room crying out as the South Tower crashed to the ground. There was another stunned silence and the phone rang next to the doors. Our teacher went to answer it and then looked up at me - my heart sank. "Julie, it's for you."

I remember getting up to answer the phone in surprise, and hearing people gasp, "It's for Julie..." I knew they all expected it was about the attacks. I knew my cousin worked in the World Trade Center, but he was my father's age and I did not know him well - even if something happened to him I doubted anyone would let me know until later in the day, after school. Still, at this point, I believed anything of nightmare-level could happen and that no one was safe. I think we all felt like that for a while.

I got to the phone and it was the guidance office, asking me to come down. I grabbed my bags without looking at my classmates, who were staring at me, and booked it to the office.

There, I remember feeling like I was in some kind of dream or bubble. Everyone was chipper with me, calm and very kind. But I was shaking as I sat down in the counselor's office, waiting for her to drop some other horrible news on me. Instead, she pulled out a file and said "I understand you are transferring to your new high school in November, right...?" I stared at her. "Are you okay?" she asked me, and I stuttered back that I was just overwhelmed and, "...the news today..." "I know." She said, "Let's try to focus on this and then you can just go home."

That's all I remember about school that day. I have no idea what we accomplished in her office. I remember feeling cold and sick as I took the bus home with the rest of my classmates around lunch time. My brother was also home when I got there, much to my relief. I remember we both were terrified and did not want to turn on the TV. There was a feeling of uncomfortable vulnerability, even at home.

The scariest part of the day occurred for me when my next door neighbor, who was also one of my teachers, came running over, tears running down her face, and hugged us tight. "Oh this is the most horrible day. I'm so terrified. All those people! Are your parents coming home?" My Dad came home shortly after, looking drained. He was an administrator at the high school he taught at, and, I imagine, had suffered a lot that day. I was relieved when he got home because my father was never afraid of anything. My Dad is always tough. Seeing the "grown-ups" losing their cool all day was the worst part of the whole experience for me. They were supposed to calm us down, explain why this was happening and what would happen next. They were supposed to have the answers, but they didn't. We were all in the same boat.

My Dad wandered into the living room in silence, turned on the TV my brother and I had been avoiding, and stood, still, as he watched them play and replay the towers collapsing. I remember him saying only one sentence: "My God, these shots...."

That night was tense until we heard that Tom, our cousin, had made it out of the second tower okay. My Dad relaxed, and I approached him to ask why this happened. What was happening next? Was this World War 3?

I don't remember much of what he said, except that he seemed to feel confident and safe. So I did too. I knew somewhere deep down that no one had any clue what was going to happen. But it felt like, at least for the moment, we were all okay.

In spite of this, I went to sleep that night with images from TV all day speeding through my mind as if I had stood there. Images that were not from a horror film I had watched against my better judgment, even though I wished they were. They were real. This monstrous event had actually happened - not in my nightmares. I knew this impacted me permanently.

As I said before, I believe most of my generation lost some of our innocence that day, no matter where we were. We watched, feeling like we were intruding on something very adult and not permitted for our eyes, as towers filled with everyday working human beings fell to the ground in clouds of smoke - because of enemies none of us even really knew about. Since most of the reports were being live-streamed, nothing was edited out, and we watched in horror as people fell and jumped out of the towers - knowing they were falling to their deaths. It seemed completely inappropriate, and beyond morbid, to be watching these things.

It has been 15 years since that day, and that day still does not quite make sense to me. Yet some part of me internalized it enough to realize that humans can do horrible things. The magnitude of that tragedy - the generations of devastation it caused - was irreversible. Of course I realized that others on the planet were already unfortunately familiar with this level of devastation. But little me in my small town New York home surrounded by a family of teachers and musicians, did not know such destruction so up close.

I can't speak for prior generations, who lived through Pearl Harbor, JFK's assassination or Martin Luther King Jr.'s, or any other such traumatizing events. But, for me, seeing these evil forces destroying thousands of lives, on repeat for hours and days straight, was something that shifted my focus. Watching replays of people screaming and falling to their deaths was... unnecessary, to put it mildly.

But I felt a desperate grief for the victims, and it was as if watching somehow created solidarity. So I watched, and watched, and watched... We all did. But I believe, at some point... we needed to stop.

I knew we were no longer living in a time where we could just get on the train and feel safe getting to our destination. I knew no amount of patriotism, no number of concerts sung for America that fall, could heal the wounds everyone faced that day - especially those who lost loved ones, their lives, or their coworkers as they ran from the buildings. A big part of me learned that I simply couldn't trust that our country was safe anymore.

As I've gone through the 15 years since 9/11 - many of those years spent attending school near NYC, and living for 5 years there while working in midtown Manhattan - I've thought a lot about how different our lives would be if 9/11 had never happened. Surely something else could have happened (or would have), but imagine how much more courageous we could be?

I wonder all the time how my classmates have handled their lives post-9/11. Many of them have children now. Many are living right in Manhattan. How is life different? Do they have knee-jerk reactions when seeing anything they could deem suspicious on an airplane? Do they think about their safety when they sit in office cubicles?

Now I live here, in Amsterdam, next to countries who've been the targets of similar acts of gruesome violence. I am no stranger to terrorism anymore, even though I've (thank God) never been on the scene in person. But reports have come out saying that just viewing these acts on tv or through social media has created the very feeling the enemy hopes for: terror. They go on to say that by witnessing these kinds of attacks, we actually live them out in some way and suffer emotional trauma. We forget this, while we hunker down watching horror films for entertainment or binge-watching 'Stranger Things' on Netflix. We don't realize that it is a very different thing to view our real life fellow men and women being mowed down by ISIS, other terrorists, or just a local psychopath. Some part of the brain cannot be fooled: That's real. That could have been me, or my family or friends.

Every time something terrifying happens, it pours in within seconds - now, not just in the news on TV, but on my phone in the form of Facebook posts, Youtube, Instagram, Twitter... you can't run away from it. And it's almost as if I was trained in that day that the way to control the fear and "deal with" the events at play was to watch it, and get as much information as possible. I'm realizing how unhealthy it actually is.

Research has shown that those suffering PTSD after 9/11 include not only the victims and those at the scenes, but a hefty percentage of those who were just at home, like you and me, obssessively viewing footage of these acts. It sounds lame to admit that I think I was traumatized just by watching stuff on TV, but it hit another level. The problem isn't just that the footage is available constantly - it's that people often cannot help themselves from watching, even when they know it will be damaging to them.

In one of the replays, it even occurred to me that I was beginning to analyze things from the perspective of what these terror groups were thinking. Each of the news reports had a time stamp on them - "8:30 AM, 8:31 AM, 8:32 AM..." When watching the replays, I would notice the time stamp, knowing that the plane crashes would show up at certain times. I realized, that may have been exactly what Osama Bin Laden had hoped for: our eyes would be on our TVs, staring at WTC after the first crash, dissecting what the heck was going on. Then, plane number 2 was going to hit, just long enough after for everyone to be tuned in, but not so long that people weren't still staring. It was gruesomely brilliant. It captivated us all in the worst ways. And, worse yet - in my opinion showed how much these people enjoyed creating the absolute largest amount of fear.

After MSNBC decided to start annually streaming the live footage from that day every year on the anniversary, a report came out requesting the replays stop. (Slate.com report, September 8, 2016).  Simply put: This is not a Hallmark moment. When we flipped on the TV in Hilversum, Netherlands, and saw that there was literally an entire days' worth of movies and shows about 9/11, Bruno looked at me in surprise "Seriously? Who wants to watch all of this?" I shook my head, knowing that, sadly, this has been the case for years.

I'm angry for everyone, really. I'm sad we live in this world. But it's hard to say what the right way to grieve is. Some people would argue that if we hadn't seen the footage, we wouldn't be there to support everyone. Who knows, I have a feeling it is in our nature to need to absorb as much info as possible. We perceive the threats and want to understand them as much as we can to protect ourselves from future attacks.

But, the reality is that none of us is immune to danger, and never was. Maybe we are an older, wiser generation. Or maybe we are simply more fearful. But I hope in time, we will show ourselves to be stronger, more peace-loving people, and somehow find ways of growing in spite of so much tragedy and terror.

Time Traveling

Here we are at September - embarking on my absolute favorite time of year (particularly in the Netherlands), and diving into action.

This morning I find myself in Hilversum (by way of Amsterdam), securing some of the final steps of my Visa paperwork and beyond excited for every next step. After a way-too-short two week long vacation in the USA with my family and boyfriend, whom had never been there before, it feels a little like that trip was all a dream. The last time I recall consciously thinking "in no time, I'll be back in Amsterdam again", was somewhere along the coast of Maine a couple weeks ago. Almighty Time will never cease to amaze, especially when it comes to literally hopping across different time zones.

So where do I begin?

Months ago, late April to be exact, I was back in New York for three weeks to visit my family, when Bruno, (boyfriend), started talking about joining me for the next trip back home. Even though our relationship had just begun, (with many months of close friendship preceding), I felt confident that this was going to happen. I mentioned in a last post that he's Belgian, and he had never been to the USA, so I figured - what better time than the midst of Trump madness and political upheaval? Let's give him all those American extremes!

Just kidding. In reality, I prayed that we would be able to plan our trip back around my family's summer Maine vacation and he could hopefully hide among the craggy ocean shores eating Lobster and discussing New England's colorful history with my father. That's closer to what happened.

The weekend we boarded our flight(s) to Boston was Gay Pride in Amsterdam, the celebration for Euro Pride, and the most annoying train construction I've ever experienced. We grabbed a bus to Schiphol Airport rather than our usual 10 minute train ride, stood in a huge line to check in, and then calmly awaited boarding time. That trip was filled with delays - an hour delay from Amsterdam to Iceland, an hour delay from Iceland to Boston... But somehow this didn't cramp our style. We laughed and goofed off and chomped on cucumber slices and carrots we had packed in our carry-ons and the next thing I knew we were descending over Boston. Yay!!!! America!!

It was a very strange experience to bring Bruno, who was such an established part of my 'other world' (not to get too 'Vampire Diaries' on you), to meet my parents, in the USA, where I was raised in all of my quirky, crazy, rollercoaster-ride goodness. He already had an intermediate knowledge of my family from the crazy amount of stories I had told (and the unfortunate exposure to my brother and sister's nicknames for me via Facebook), but still, it was a little nuts! I think everyone was shell-shocked at first, but we headed to an Airport restaurant and started the two week journey through New York and New England. Bruno had his first ever 'clam chowda', I had a regrettable Sam Summer (which led to me passing out shortly after dinner), and my parents were beaming and excited to start showing Bruno the Norman version of America.

It became immediately apparent to me upon arriving that this was going to be a trip home unlike any trip home before. Part of this was, of course, I was bringing somebody to share it with me. But actually a lot of it had to do with how much had changed since the last time.

As I know I've said before, and at the risk of sounding terribly redundant... I never expected to wind up living in the Netherlands for more than a few months. I thought that I would maybe stay here for some time, audition and wind up in another European city by the end of my visa or back home in New York - which would be fine with me! And maybe it's because I had such a temporary approach to things, but all of a sudden now I'm looking at staying at least this next year, maybe (probably) a lot longer, and creating a foundation for a life I already love. That happened fast, unexpectedly, and perhaps... slightly before I felt 'ready' for it.

This time last year, I was back in New York packing my things up, taking a lot of deep breaths and making a lot of to-do lists, and saying "okay, see you in a few months" to my friends and loved ones. I felt rebellious doing it, as if I were cheating the system or playing hooky somehow, and also completely up for whatever came. This time, I felt the strength of what had changed right away: I was back with my family, in a place I will always call 'Home', but very aware that this time... my home is indefinitely in Europe.

None of this is a huge shock to me. I fell in love with Europe back in 2008 when I spent the summer babysitting and singing in Paris, alongside the same best friend who gave me a place to start a life in Amsterdam, babysitting (her girls) and singing here. Not everyone would look at this path and see how it works. But I did - I always have. I have found more profound meaning in sorting a tantrum out with a three year old and discussing why butterflies only come out in summer (all managed in more than one language), than some of the longest hours of my life spent in meetings and conference calls.

That doesn't mean I don't attend meetings or hold conference calls anymore. But they don't run my life - they're in attendance. They are accompanying the train rides, horrific attempts at Dutch, the hours writing in a journal and holding hands with the little kids, and big kids, of my life all day, singing through nerves in front of crowds of people who probably really don't understand me, and constantly, daily standing in awe of this world.

Last night, Bruno and I biked along the canal to get to our dinner reservation at 8:30 in a hopping neighbourhood near the red light district. The sun was setting, casting a pink glow on the water beside us and as I followed close behind him I said "sometimes I'm so amazed by the beauty of this place that I don't even care if I accidentally fall in." I'm pretty sure these words invited future attempts of Bruno dumping me into the canal... but I meant it in more ways than one. I've fallen hard for this city. For the way it has welcomed me. For the quirky, dry sense of humor found on every street. For its persistent acceptance of every human being. For the days I wondered what the hell I was doing here, only to look around me and see 100 reasons staring back. Europe may be a complicated place, but it has never once failed to show me solutions I didn't think of. Or, even more adventurous, who I really am.

So this time, when we hugged goodbye in Boston and I broke down trying to thank my incredibly generous parents for everything they did for us in two weeks time, I was able to laugh at how cheesy I am and know that this is manageable. I wish I had a private jet to go see my family every weekend, but the distance is easily bridged and the home on either side is more than I ever expected for myself. The uncertainty and adventure of this time has been worth it in more ways than I can count. And all this before being fluent enough to understand what people are really saying around me each day....