Sheananigans

hey all, the time has arrived. after many years, it’s time to sunset good ol’ owljolson. it’ll be staying up as an archive for the foreseeable future, so no worries there! but from now on, my main personal blog will be over at owltypical. and of course, my art and webcomic blogs will remain where they are!

to add some background, i’m not an army brat, but my family moved around a helluva lot during my youth, all over the country, though we spent the most time in the nj/ny area. we even lived in manhattan for a year or so, across the street from where the village voice was headquartered at the time. we visited nyc a great deal as well when we could, the northeast coast has always felt like home to me because of all that. the twin towers were a very regular, very familiar sight.

in 2001, i was 16, almost 17, and we lived in northern jersey. a few months before 9/11, my parents decided to take me and my little brother to actually visit the twin towers in person. they wanted to show us the restaurant where they’d met (they both worked on wall street back in the day), so many years ago. they were so thrilled it was still there, so many years later. i can’t remember what the restaurant was called. so soon after that that trip, the place was nothing but dust and death.

i remember being in awe of the towers, how huge and full of business and people and bustle they were. the line to the elevator, and the incredibly long elevator ride up, as the tour guide chatted to us. going to the very very top, and staring down in awe at the view of the city, everything so far below. never had a view of anything like that outside of a plane before or since.

a few days before 9/11, my mom, brother and me went to nyc again. i was a hs junior, it was time to start thinking about college, so we went to wander around the pratt institute area for a bit. on our way there, we drove right past the towers, right under them. the last time i ever saw them.

my first class in the morning at that time was art class. a fun, chill way to start the day, with the radio on the shelf playing late ‘90s/early ‘00s music softly in the background. the morning of the 11th, everything so normal, and then just as class was ending and the bell for next period rang, hearing a sudden blurb on the radio on my way out, about a terrible plane crash that had just happened in nyc.

that was all i heard for a bit. then i started seeing occasional worried faces, saw the librarians clustering together in the library, concerned and whispering urgently to each other. going to lunch like normal in the cafeteria. the cafeteria with the wall-mounted tvs for students to watch as they waited in line, and that some boys turned on just in time to see the terrible footage unfolding.

it’s one of the moments from 9/11 that’s still burned clearly in my memory. seeing the news go up on the cafeteria tv, seeing the awful destruction and trying to come to terms with what unbelievable things i was suddenly seeing and hearing. the cluster of students slowly gathering around the tv and silently standing like statues, staring up at it, until a teacher hurriedly came over and turned the tv off, and told everybody to calm down and go about their business.

it’s hard to go about your business when you live 40ish minutes away from nyc, and many of the students in the school had parents and relatives who commuted to the city for work. my grandmother still lived in nyc at the time. i spent a good chunk of that day desperately wondering if she was okay. wondering about other students’ parents. in the end, one of our local residents did die that day: jeremy glick, one of the people who stormed the cockpit on flight 93. so many people died that day, in so many awful ways. my 16-year old mind struggled to process it all.

after that crystal clear lunch period, most of the rest of the school day is a blur to me. the news eventually made its way around the school fully, and the only other clear memory i have is us sitting at our desks in a semi-circle in ap english class, all of us and our teacher just looking at each other. old mrs. valentine, looking so sad and at a loss, quietly telling us she didn’t know what to say.

usually i took the bus home from school, but that day my dad came and picked me up. i remember his quiet, seething anger. him going, ‘we’ll get them for this.’ the man had always been a hardcore conservative, but from that day onward he spiralled even further.

the rest of the day is a blur as well. my mom sitting on the edge of her seat on the couch, watching the news intently. i think we managed to get in touch with my grandma, made sure she was okay in her part of the city. i remember a thread about it on the forum i hung out on at the time, and one of the european members going good, she was kind of glad, america deserved to have all those citizens die.

i’ve always been prone to being an insomniac with sleeping issues, but that night i was so utterly overwhelmed, it was one of the few times in my life i just immediately passed out almost as soon as i lay down. pure black dreamless sleep. the weeks after being a blur of military bombing footage, war declarations, horrifying photos, charity memorial concerts. david bowie sadly singing simon & garfunkle’s america on the tv, the only time i think my homophobic parents ever willingly watched/listened to him perform.

there are so many people alive now who were small children or who were not even born yet when 9/11 happened, people who are now adults. i wish i could get across what a sudden, searing experience it was to watch such an awful piece of major history unfold in real time, especially when young. i guess this pandemic is something like that experience, just dragged out achingly slow over time. this was a quick, sharp, painful shock.

the world has always been a fucked-up, imperfect place, no question there, but me and so many people around my age, us millenials and ‘90s Kids, remember how things Used To Be. how the ‘90s had seemed like such a quiet, safe decade, as children. we were only vaguely aware of distant conflicts and oj simpson and the various -isms and -ists and -phobias, they weren’t fully real. life was okay, life was normal. 9/11 changed things overnight, it was a childhood-ender, it made us realize that things were not okay and normal, and if they had ever been, they never would be again. people got angrier, louder, more paranoid. news became 24/7, ever-present, sensationalist. us versus them became the rule of the day, politics became more vicious, more petty, more unbearable. the internet exploded and came into its own, it grew and grew and became a hotbed for so many things, and made sure we never, ever stopped being aware of fucked-up imperfection ever again. there’s a certain sort of civility and thoughtfulness that literally vanished from the country and its discourse overnight.

i remember some years later, visiting nyc again with my boyfriend at the time. at one point we went to where the towers used to be. looked through the wire fencing at the unbelievably massive pit in the ground, street vendors hocking knock-off memorial Never Forget merchandise to tourists. i haven’t been back since. i hear it’s a fairly lovely place for the most part now, but still not finished being rebuilt.

i’m not sure that i have any real advice, or any pithy sayings to insert here. just that i needed to write all this down, and get it out of me. i can’t believe it’s been twenty years. two whole decades, me being just shy of 17 at the time, and me being just shy of 37 now. how my life, and the life of so many others, has such a clear Before and After division because of it. 9/11 has haunted us for twenty years, has haunted and corrupted this country and everything about it, and feels like it always will.