The day was just like any other day, a regular morning with the usual maple waffles and your average Barbie doll play session while driving to school. I don't remember much, but I'm sure the morning routine included some messy finger painting, some fake food by Chef Suzy, and story time from Mrs. Ortiz. It was a day that changed everything, and ironically enough I don't remember anything about that day. 8:46 a.m. on Sept. 11, 2001 meant everything to America, but on that day it just meant Barbie dolls and story time for me. It wasn't until much later that I realized the real change came in the aftermath for me.
My mom used to tell me when I was younger that abuelo and abuela got to go all the way through security with us when I was little. We were once able to walk with them all the way to the departure gate, and my tiny hands used to wave goodbye through the windows. I don't remember much of this. I was constantly, incessantly, reminded that we used to able to carry guns on planes, and there were no metal detectors. But the sad thing is I wasn't there for that; I don't know that.
Today the girl in preK-4 is a freshman in college. Years later, everything has changed, even though it hasn't really changed much for me. I've lived through the increased security and the metal detectors in my libraries. I've always known the extremely tedious airport security measures. Metal detectors and increased security in theme parks is not news to me. I grew up dumping my bag contents out at concert venues. In my world, gun control laws have always been scarce and I have grown up with Al-Qaeda, ISIS, and the increasing threats of terror. This year, Times Square for New Year's Eve had over 6,000 NYPD officers and an increase in the number of snipers on buildings.
For my parents and their friends this is the new normal. They lived through the pain, some witnessed the tragedy, some lost their family members, and all saw the increased security as odd but necessary. Yet this is my normal. It's always been my normal.
I was too young to understand the fear, the tragedy. It was impossible, there was a curtain over me shielding the real world from my small innocent, brown eyes. But eventually you grow up and the curtain is lifted and everything changes. The fear that wasn't a part of me then is a part of me now. I feel it all the time. I feel it in the gym while I sweat on the elliptical. It creeps up on me so suddenly I'm not even sure how it got there. I realize that a crazed gunman can walk into my gym right now and start shooting for no reason. I feel it while I sit in a movie theater and the weird guy next to me is talking to himself. My brain flips its thinking and ponders whether this guy could blow us all up now. I feel it on the streets of Gainesville, my small college town. I feel it on planes. I feel it in the classroom. I feel it all the time, everywhere.
It's a fear so entrenched in me after 14 years that I never realized it was my normal. It is my normal to be afraid and to exhale deeply whenever I see metal detectors and police officers. Even though the fear strikes me at random moments, I remember how important it is to just live.
You can't stop the inevitable. You can't change the future. If it's going to happen it will and if it's not, it won't. There are people in our world who work tirelessly to make us safer, they are the goods ones. Don't lose sight of them, always keep a little bit of hope that things will be better. Know that if the fear consumes you, they've won and you've lost. Don't lose sight of your purpose. Your purpose is to live and to find meaning in your life, don't let the fear strip that away from you.
