Three days after my fifth birthday, the World Trade Center was brought down by a terrorist attack. The weeks after have become blurred in my memory, but I will never forget watching tears cascade down my mother's face as she denied anything being wrong. I tried bringing her my toys to make her happy again, but she remained in a state of sadness. My father was one of the many people who left Long Island every morning to commute to Manhattan, and he was assigned to be a lawyer on a lawsuit involving the attack on the World Trade Center. Although I remember the list of loved ones we lost growing longer and longer in the days after the World Trade Center collapsed, I didn’t really understand what had happened until a few years later. My father brought my sister and I with him to his law firm one day to show us his office, and we went for a walk later that night. It was right before Christmas when I first visited Ground Zero. The three of us stood in silence looking at the freshly fallen snow over the scene of halted construction. It was then when I realized the magnitude of what had happened on September 11th, 2001.
I left New York to go to school in Pennsylvania, and I'm often asked where I’m from (I guess my Long Island accent is distinct), and I’m proud to respond that I’m from New York. I’m biased, but I know what a great state I’m allowed to call my own. My state is so diverse and individual; it’s been the birthplace of great creations, movements, stories and people. So when I studied abroad in Cyprus last March, I had no problem telling locals what state I was from. What I didn’t expect was that every person I talked to would respond in almost the exact same way; “Oh. 9/11.” It brings a pain to my heart that, to many around the globe, my home state will always be remembered as the place where America’s heart was torn out.
I often find myself wondering what I would have done if I was there. I don’t know for sure, but I hope I would have found it within myself to be brave, and to have a strong heart. I have grown up on the stories of heroes who ran toward the ground shaking collapses instead of turning away. I’ve learned the names of firefighters who sprinted towards the blaze in sweltering heat under their heavy uniform and gear. I’ve become aware of these pieces of history in order to combat the image of the towers falling. Instead, I try to remember the courage and the bravery of those who lost their lives, and the service men and women who tried to patch the hole left from two planes. I carry them with me wherever I go, because I am a New Yorker, and I always will be.
