dearestunknown

The Monsters are Real

So looking back at all the anniversary of September 11th that have come and went i realized something today while reading my TIMES magazine.. Sept. 11 2001 had much more of an effect on me then i ever realized if fact i never thought it affected me at all, i mean i was a 13year old farm girl living in Plain City (no seriously the town is called Plain City) what did a plane crashing in New York have anything to do with me or my family? I didn’t know anyone who died that day i didn’t even know anyone from New York. But I was only 13 at the time of the event and I’ve never taken that into factor when considering 9/11, in fact I’ve never taken anything into account when thinking of that day. I’ve B.S’d my way through essays saying exactly what the teacher wanted to hear because if i told them i felt nothing other then sorry for the families that lost people they would think i was a heartless sociopath. But today i was reading and it just hit me, the passage i was reading said something along the lines of “the events of this day forever changed everyone living in america”. This struck me more then anything else, because they did effect me, even two thousand miles away i was effected. Every time i wake up early and see my mother watching the news or turn the news on i fear what I’m going to see. Every time I’m in an airline terminal or a mall or anywhere really and i see someone acting strange i notice and immediately i think i hope i don’t die today or i hope they don’t hurt anyone. Before boarding the plane i always think what i’ll do, who i’ll call if anything bad were to happen mid air. Who i’d need to say good bye to first. And its not towards a particular race or religion i take extra glances at everyone. Before 9/11 we were a jaded nation, our children were just children, i was just a child. But after we all grew up, fear was placed in our hearts banishing the thoughts of nothing bad will ever happen. And i don’t do any of this consciously, i don’t actively think everyone is a terrorist. But the thoughts are there warning me so that if anything bad were to happen i would be able to help, i would be able to save one more person or at least live to tell the tale. I always have an exit strategy. I believe that every thing we are alive to see or experience changes us and our children, i know my father and mothers experiences have changed and shaped me and even though my parents weren’t alive during WWII what my grandparents witnessed and experienced changed the way they raised their children and in turn the way my father raised me. Everything is changing kids, we cant blame the media or video games. If it were for the TV and the Movies and the video games i don’t think children could survive the harsh trauma that getting tossed into the real world would cause them, if we held back every little bad thing and then say at 13 or 16 or even 18 we just flooded them with every bad little thing what human being could handle that? Watching the effects of Rumspringa should show us why so many Amish kids go back its a scary harsh horrible world and the only way to live and to handle it are to just keep going, just keep breathing with the hopes that one day this will all get better because we don’t have the luxury of saying no and running back home to mommy and daddy who will tuck us into bed and check for monsters in the closet. The monsters are real. We are the monsters. And we’ve just got to keep on till we can make this world into something we would actually want to bring children into, till we stop pretending that all the bad things aren’t real, and till we can all become more selfless because hey we are all in this together, and everything you had to go through and all your terrible days someone else has had them to. We are all stuck here just trying to survive for tomorrow.