I just saw this excellent diary and felt so overwhelmed by emotion as I was reading comments that I decided to write this. This is not news. This is not the outcome of hard work. This is just my story.
If you feel it's irrelevant here, I'll delete it.
For me it all began in the beginning of the afternoon. Close to Paris. I had a day off; I had never been to New York although it was one of the places I absolutely wanted to visit.
I remember I had just bought a new radio set and I had spent half an hour programming it so I could go from one station to another by just pressing a button. The radio was on all the morning. Then I heard about the first plane. My first thoughts were: Accident, very small plane... something like that, inarticulate.
But soon after there was this other news. A second plane in the second tower. And all of a sudden, I couldn't believe what I had heard. I turned the TV on but there was nothing yet about it (I had no cable TV and the French media would take at least one hour to catch up on the news).
Seven years ago, the internet wasn't what it is these days. I don't remember trying to find out about the events online. I listened to the radio, going from one station to another, trying to understand what was happening. Then the TV channels started to broadcast footage.
There is a famous French journalist who commented the footage that day who was asked as he retired last year: What is the most exciting day you lived as a journalist? He answered 9-11. And then was asked: What was the worst day you lived as a journalist, the one you would want to delete entirely if you could? And he answered 9-11.
I remember I stood in front of the TV. I didn't seat down. I couldn't. I remember I spent a lot of time, my hand in front of my mouth, eyes wide open, hoping for a quick wake up that wouldn't come.
Then a tower fell down. I screamed in front of my TV: NO NO NO NO NO NO!!!!! as loud as I could, like it was going to change anything anyway. And then the second tower...
Did I cry then? I'm not sure. I was shocked, just shoked.
And there were the other planes... Flight 93, the Pentagon... and the towers crumbling down a thousand times, people jumping out of the windows a thousand times, and Osama Bin Laden's face, a face I had never seen before, with a name I had never heard before, again and again and again. People running for their lives in the dust cloud that downtown Manhattan had just become.
A friend of mine had to stop by that night for whatever reason. We both worked in a call center then, calling people all day long to ask them things about their favorite cookies and cars and local polticians. As soon as she got to my place she asked me what had happened. She knew of course but she wanted details. She said: Everybody you had on the phone at work today. They all had their TV on, you know. All of them.
You couldn't escape this. It was all over the walls, the news stands, the TVs, the conversations. For days I thought this would never end. There would be no grieving, no mourning, that would need longer. The thing is, you never stop grieving, you never stop mourning. It just gets a little easier. I thought the world had died. I though I would never go back to a normal life. I thought nothing would ever be the same. I was somewhat righ, somewhat wrong. We all went on, we the witnesses, but the world is different. There is nothing that normal anymore, it seems.
I remember trying to forget and going to the movies on the 12th. I saw Swordfish that had just come out on that day (movies come out on wednesdays here). We were maybe 10 in the theatre, laughing very uncomfortably every two minutes. I don't remember much about the movie. But I remember the feeling of terrible unease, watching buildings exploding and stories about terrorists.
I remember a collegue, telling me: You know, I didn't know what was going on and I turned my TV on and saw the towers and I thought: Crap another silly american movie! then she changed the channel, puzzled, shoked. She couldn't believe it. She was so sad when she told me this, her eyes were tearing. By the way she's a Muslim.
I remember being at a record store a few days after, filled with music everywhere. And the music suddenly stopped when the world turned all silent. It was a tribute for the victims. And the silence all around us. France too, Europe too, we all turned the music down, we all stopped talking.
I remember praying, me, the atheist. I remember muttering a few words for the peace of the victims and their loved ones.
And for days after that, I couldn't get enough news. I wanted more and more. I wanted to understand. Like I could. Like there was something to understand.
But for years now, when I have been coming across photos or footage of the towers, I have looked away. I simply can't take it.
Today, reading leigh3352's diary I lost it again.
I wrote this story with tears in my eyes and a ball in my stomach.
Don't let anybody recycle your sadness, your pain, or your fears for political gain. 9-11 victims should be off limits. Not for me, but for the victims, their families, their friends, people who simply knew them remotely, or people like me, and so many among us, all over the world, who got to hear about them on the last day of their lives.
There will be no tip jar on this one. I think you understand why. Thank you for reading.