Visiting Ground Zero

28 August, 2006 | Leave a Comment

Almost five years after the fact, I am still traumatized by thoughts of 9/11. Many people act jaded about it, as if we should all just forget it ever happened. Of course Bush and other world leaders have twisted everything about 9/11 to fit their agenda, but that doesn’t change the way I feel about the events of that terrible day. People have said to me that America has killed more people in Iraq than 9/11 killed, which is true, but to me that does not in any way diminish the tragedy of September 11th. I refuse to trivialize the fact that two skyscrapers were blown up and thousands of people died a horrific death. Those people had nothing to do with American foreign policy, they were just average people like us living their daily lives. I will never let myself lose sight of the human tragedy the whole nation suffered that day.

I moved away from New York about a year before 9/11. When I lived in Brooklyn, I took the subway to and from Manhattan each day. The train crossed the bridge over the harbor, taking us right by the World Trade Center. I was always in awe of those massive towers. I remember going to the observation deck with friends, having dinner at the top with my sister, shopping in the arcade on the ground level. I could see the WTC from my neighborhood in Brooklyn and when I was in lower Manhattan, I used the towers to navigate my way around the confusing streets of the Village or Soho. When I returned to New York for the first time after the towers fell in November of 2001, Ground Zero was still filled with smoldering wreckage. I was with my parents and we had taken Amtrak down from Boston. When the NY skyline came into view I gasped in horror at the sight of it without the towers. I had to look away. I couldn’t bear to look at the skyline. Even today I’m not quite sure how to look at the city.

I visited Ground Zero this afternoon and it’s still a shocking sight. Seeing the spot where the towers stood brought back all the memories. It’s bizarre to feel such feelings of grief for two skyscrapers. Of course it’s more than that — the thought of all the people who died on that spot is the real tragedy. But I do feel grief for the towers as well. To me, they were an essential part of New York.

Click here to watch the video I took this afternoon. Here are some photos I took:

Looking at the spot where the WTC towers used to stand: