This is not a political column, and you have been warned. On September 11, 24 years ago, I was working on the edge of NYC. One of the techs came upstairs with a radio, and that’s how I found out that the first tower had been hit by a plane. I went to the deli next door that had a TV just in time to see the second plane hit the other tower. I saw that live! I’m lucky. I didn’t see them fall live because I had to get back to work.
There is no really good way to describe what seeing that did to me and everyone else that day. The main telephone switch was hit on Tower 7. They were routing calls up through our area and back down, and our world shrank. I could not call out to tell my family we were okay for three DAYS. I could not get a line through for 3 days. Days! And by the way? We could see the smoke.
I was a columnist for a website at that time. What I’m about to show you took me 3 months to write because I was struggling to find the right words – trying to show the impact of this on me. It was not in any way easy. Not at all. But I needed to show whoever was reading the website these stunning things that had happened. And now I suppose I should get to it.
>>>Dream Into My Waking Hours<<<
The city is crying. It comes into my dreams, turns them into nightmares, and begs me to heal it. Overused similes pour through my mind, the wounded soul, one wing drooping, red tinted tears sliding down, a broken winged butterfly trying desperately to move, an injured animal dragging itself off to hide and the pain pours over me. The tide never ceases, as the constant motion pounds upon me. I try not to let myself be worn away. I don’t want to lose the sense of self every being has, but the pleading visions of a city in pain begin to overwhelm my inner vision until a protest breaks out.
I’m just one person! How much can I do??
The city is crying and it waits for me, precious life fluid slowly seeping but it remains ever so patient. The dreams creep into my waking hours, tendrils winding through my thoughts, images appearing in my head at unforeseen moments until I must somehow find something to do to quiet the visions that haunt me. I put the words down on paper but they just don’t express what I see, what I hear, what I feel and I struggle to convey what’s being pressured into my mind. Restless sleep I toss and turn, somehow trying to reach out to soothe and comfort the bleeding agitated entity that is the city.
I’m here. I care. You are a part of me as I am a minute bit of you. As in a puzzle, every piece counts, and you’ve lost so many already. I know you don’t want to lose any more.
Please don’t cling so tightly that you strangle me. Please don’t crush me under the weight of your anguish. Please think past the hurt and listen to what I am trying to tell you.
I know you can’t get away, you can’t escape, but a touch of you travels with me, so please give me the time I need to help myself so I can help you Let me go where I need to, when I need to, but I promise to come back. I need healing too! It has to start somewhere so let me start small, let me start someplace.
I shall begin at the beginning. I shall try and take the time to rest and recover, to regain myself, because that is a start to restoring the city.
The city is crying, but it is listening now. The tears have slowed as I speak my thoughts, as the ideas coalesce and the iron-clad grip loosens until I can breathe again. I may only be one person, but just as a drop of water can wear away a stone, so can I start soothing the suffering, enough to take the edge off so the city can see a little past what is gone and look ahead to what may be. I shall hope the tears will slow so I may dry them away. I shall bandage the bleeding, splint the breaking, and ease the pain. I shall heed the city, calling in my dreams, and do what I can … what I must.
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If you got this far, thank you for reading. I hope this showed a little bit of what all of us went through on September 11 and the weeks following it. It was unbelievably rough.
Friends, I know everybody begs you for money. I promise you that of all of the outlets bugging you for spare change, we are the smallest and the hardest working. We’re a bunch of old, disabled people, except one writer in his mid-50s. But the rest of us are in our sixties and seventies, and this is a labor of love. All we’re asking for is the ability to continue our quest to tell the truth about Trump and ensure democracy survives. If you can help, please do. Thanks. Ursula
Susan, your words have attended my weary soul. You express so well the human need to stop, step back, even hide ourselves away until we trust our emotions to step into the void of confusion and anger and disbelief. You show so clearly how we are compelled to help, but it’s true that we must attend to our own needs in order to offer assistance to another.
I offer to you the lyrics of a song about a young mother whose child has died in spite of valiant prayer and what was thought to be unshakeable faith. It’s a bit long, but I think it dovetails with your beautiful “letter of love” to a city in mourning still. Thank you for you life-giving words.
HELD by Christa Wells (first recorded by Natalie Grant)
verse
Two months is too little
They let him go, they had no sudden healing
To think that providence would
Take a child from his mother while she prays is appalling
Who told us we′d be rescued?
What has changed and why should we be saved from nightmares?
We’re asking why this happens to us who have died to live
It′s unfair
chorus
This is what it means to be held
How it feels when the sacred is torn from your life
And you survive
This is what it is to be loved
And to know that the promise was when everything fell
We’d be held
verse
This hand is bitterness
We wanna taste it, let the hatred numb our sorrow
The wise hand opens slowly
To lilies of the valley and tomorrow
chorus
This is what it means to be held
How it feels when the sacred is torn from your life
And you survive
This is what it is to be loved
And to know that the promise was when everything fell
We’d be held
bridge
If hope is born of suffering
If this is only the beginning
Can we not wait for one hour
Watching for our Savior?
chorus
This is what it means to be held
How it feels when the sacred is torn from your life
And you survive
This is what it is to be loved
And to know that the promise was when everything fell
We′d be held
Yeah, ooh, be held, oh
outro
This is what it is to be loved
And to know that the promise was when everything fell
We′d be held
This is what it means to be held
Writer(s): Christa Nichole Wells
A couple of notes:
The line “to us who have died to live” refers to individuals who believe they have died to human sin and now live in Christ. And as a survivor of sexual assault at gunpoint when I was in my twenties, the line, “when the sacred is torn from your life and you survive” has powerful meaning. Like many survivors of violent crime, I thought it might have been easier to die from the attack than survive in terror and emotional distress. But I was wrong. Surviving has meant I didn’t miss all the good that has happened to me since the attack.
Thanks, Susan and readers. This is long but I hope it resonated with some of you!
Powerfully evocative. Thank you Susan.