Do you remember?

I remember exactly where I was when I first learned about the events on 9/11/01. I remember feeling shock and complete helplessness. Never in my life will I forget watching people jump from the first tower to their death. That image is burned in my memory forever. I felt physically and emotionally sick.

I was a sophomore at IU, just waking up for the day to get ready for class. I turned on my little 13" tv in my bedroom, and it just happened to be on channel 13 with the news. At first it was the normal news show, not much interest to me. I used the tv as background noise to help wake me up. And then, all of a sudden, the reporters voices were louder, more urgent. The camera was shooting up to the sky, following a plane as it approached the buildings in the NY skyline. What was going on? It was flying directly into Tower 1 of the World Trade Center.

The next hour I just sat and cried in front of my tv in my bedroom. I eventually got dressed, and in a daze, walked to class in Ballentine Hall. On the way there, I passed a girl who just received a phone call on her cell. She immediately dropped to her knees on the sidewalk. Everyone around knew immediately. From her end of the conversation, we learned she had lost both her parents. There was absolutely nothing anyone could do for her. We helped her find her friends and they took her home. There was nothing else to do.

Most classes were cancelled, or we sat there to talk about the events. It was too fresh and we were too confused to really articulate what we were feeling. I remember being so scared that another attack would take place around Chicago - where most of my immediate family lived. I continually called them, but I couldn't get through most of the time because everyone had the same idea. We missed our families. Did they see what happened? Were they okay? We love them.

The weeks and months after 9/11 we felt a new appreciation for what it meant to be American. We felt close to one another. Look what we were able to make it through. We lost far too many people in a horrible, horrible way. But we will be stronger as a nation.....what happened to that? It feels like instead of embracing one another, we are continually picking apart our differences again.

I pray that we can regain that sense of appreciation for one another and respect for all. We can't blame an entire ethnicity or culture for what happened. We can't pick each other apart for how "un-American" we are. To truly respect the people we lost on 9/11/01 we have to move forward with love in our hearts, not hate.