I don’t even know what to say. I don’t know how to sit here and even attempt to write about today. I glance through other diaries to find that everyone writes about the same thing. We are unified in our pain and our anger, and in our sorrow.
I cannot comprehend what’s going on in the world right now. I can’t imagine New York without the twin towers. I can’t fathom what it must be like to be in New York or Washington tonight. I can’t watch the video of that huge commercial jet plowing into the building without being shocked and angered every time, every replay, every angle.
We were sent home from work just before 10 this morning, and I’ll be at home again tomorrow since the center is only reopening to “essential personnel” and I am not one of those. They’ll be checking every car and every person, with metal detectors and dogs. I usually forget the fact that I am an employee of the federal government. That I work on government property in government buildings. It is a shock to be reminded that the country I work for, and the country I love, is so powerfully hated by others.
I am angry, I am horrified, I am saddened. I am shocked, traumatized, worried, and anguished. I am pissed off, and I am scared. I wonder how something like this can happen. I wonder how four planes can have been hijacked in one morning, how anyone managed to coordinate such a vicious and unimaginable attack. I wonder who could have so much disregard for human life that they’d want to do something like this, to cause such destruction, to harm so many innocent civilians, to conduct what is practically an act of war. To ground every airplane. To force evacuations in every major city. To bring this country to a grinding halt.
I called my dad, and my mom, and my sister. It’s not like they need to know that I’m ok because nothing happened here in Houston. I don’t know why I felt the need to call them, but I did.
And now I sit and watch and listen and breathe along with an entire nation. I pray for the people who were injured, and killed, and those who knew them. And along with the rest of the world, I grieve.
