journaling

writ­ten as a let­ter to myself on that day, from today, five years later.

Dear Julia,

Tonight you sit alone in Wood­stock, in stunned shock along with the rest of the world at the events of this morn­ing.  You remem­ber that the day started as an ordi­nary day; you got to GPC about 8:40 for your 2D Design class at 9 a.m.  You sat there with Heather and Bir­git, laugh­ing and chat­ting as you worked, until Inna Dereshin­sky came in late with the hor­ri­fy­ing news that a plane had hit the World Trade Cen­ter.  Cathryn Miles found a boom­box from some­where, and you three tried to keep work­ing while you lis­tened to the static-y broad­cast.  But by 10:30 you had all given up any pre­tense of work, and at 11 Cathryn took pity on you and dis­missed the class.  The TV room in the stu­dent cen­ter was jammed, but you found space on the floor and watched the news footage with Con­nie and Tina, see­ing again and again the plane hit the sec­ond tower and then the col­lapse, one after the other, of both tow­ers.  When you could stand no more, you left for your office, just before things turned ugly as Mus­lim and non-Muslim stu­dents got into an alter­ca­tion.  Dr. McCurdy rightly shut the cam­pus down and sent the stu­dents home, then the staff and fac­ulty, but you could only wait until you could leave.  As more and more news and reac­tion came over the Inter­net, you fret­ted and wor­ried more and more.  Randy was at Wood­ward — would he get home safely?  Nick was in Phoenix, due to come back the next day — what would hap­pen there?  So you sit there now, try­ing to make sense of the sense­less and failing.

As I write to you, it is five years to the day after that sem­i­nal event.  Although you didn’t lose any­one you knew in the attacks, Sep­tem­ber 11, 2001 becomes the first day of a period that will com­pletely change the life you know now.  I won’t sugar-coat it.  The next two years will be hell, the worst two years of your life so far.  That well-known stress mea­sure­ment scale?  You’ll be com­pletely off the chart — divorce, ill­ness, death of a beloved fam­ily mem­ber, Randy leav­ing for col­lege, mov­ing not once but twice, and that’s just the really big stuff. Those two years will be cold, lonely, uncom­fort­able phys­i­cally and men­tally, and make you ques­tion every­thing you have ever known, believed, or dreamed. You will have to draw on all the strength you have devel­oped over the decades to sur­vive it.

But…

You will sur­vive, and in the end make the life you always wanted for your­self.  Don’t be sur­prised at the changes that occur in you.  Don’t be sur­prised at the unex­pected oppor­tu­ni­ties that show up, the unex­pected friends that you find.  In the end, you will be hap­pier than you have ever been before, and you will find the love that you’ve long yearned for.

And five years from now, you will sit at the com­puter in your own home, and write this let­ter, and you will know how for­tu­nate you are.  For you, the life you will have will be worth the hell you will go through.

But you will never for­get, and you will remem­ber those who died, and those whose lives were irrev­o­ca­bly changed by today.

Love,

The Julia of Sep­tem­ber 11, 2006