One year ago today at 9:20am central time, I was walking out of the third floor of Harbert Building coming from Medical Sociology. A girl from my class had left early, and I found her out in the hall talking to a professor. She was crying. Her father worked at the pentagon, and I overheard that the pentagon had been bombed or something like that. She was hysterical at the thought of losing her father. I was shaken, but only for a minute. As I walked further down the hall I heard the TV on in the division office and, after talking for a moment to my professor Shane Pitts, we bothed walked in to the office and saw what was happening on TV. My advisor, Dr. McCallum, looked at me and Shane and just pointed at the screen. He said something like "Its not an accident." I was floored. A couple of profs kept talking about what was happening and I wandered out into the hall. My friend Lauren came up the stairs just as I was crossing in front of that door. She looked at me and said something like "What's wrong with you?." I answered that someone had just flown planes in to the WTC and the pentagon. Shocked, "on purpose?!" slipped out of her mouth. I said yes. Now that we were both sufficiently bewildered, I said I was going to go take a nap for some reason. She said she had to get to class. We walked off in an odd haze. I went to my room and found my roomate Drew watching the news. It went from there. The world stopped. Everything stopped. Now its a year later.
Today was a normal day. I went to class, I worked, I ate. But every time I turned on the TV I felt like I was in some bad video game again. I went to a memorial at the Cathedral downtown and just got back from a candle light vigil that we had around the bell tower on campus. People talk about this healing, but I think it will just be a nasty scar, the kind that always itches. And I'm just in Alabama, far away from any of it, locked up in an Iron-Fenced Citadel of a College. I can only imagine how others feel.
I hope eveyone is well. To anyone that reads this, I am genuinely happy that you are alive, healthy, and part of my life.
Peace,
Joe