On 9/11, almost 10 years after

I cannot or will not FULLY understand the emotions behind 9/11. No, I do not wish to claim a full comprehension of the enormity of it all.

When the twin towers of the World Trade Center collapsed, I was a freshman at the University of the Philippines-Diliman. My parents and I watched as shocked CNN news anchors struggled to find words to report what was unfolding before their very own eyes. I remember having just come home from school and finding my own jaw dropping involuntarily, my eyes, stunned at what I saw.

Now Osama Bin Laden, the brain behind those series of attacks in the US on 9/11, is dead. In fact, as of this typing, he's just been buried at an undisclosed location at sea. All of a sudden, a few minutes prior to this blog composition, I had found myself googling just how many firemen and policemen died on that day. There were 343 firemen. There were 72 policemen. And there was a dog.

Such fact had me realizing that while I was not really oblivious to what had happened since, it's only now, almost 10 years after this tragedy, that I feel like crying. Empathy, a word whose value I used to teach to my call center language trainees, struck me like a bolt of lightning and transported me to what happened a decade ago, effectively placing me into the shoes of those struggling to leave the struck towers and the shoes of those struggling to come in to save people all at the same time.

For years I've had recurring bad dreams of running down endless flights of stairs. What happened on September 11, 2001, along with natural calamities such as earthquakes, flashfloods and tsunamis, has really done nothing but reinforce my constant conscious fear of getting stuck inside a structure or a building during any kind of tragedy.

I always think, what if something, God forbid, happens to where I am? Do I run? Do I duck under a table? Do I even think of grabbing essential items if tragedy happens and I am at home? How about my sick dad? How about my other loved ones? Just how big are my chances of making it alive? Where and how do I live afterwards? Just how much money will it take for me to get my life back on track?

Such questions have me continuously trying to come to some form or semblance of preparedness. As I pack my bags in preparation for my return to the US in two months, more or less, I also grab whatever I can and feel as anything that I think I can add to my dad's "emergency kit". I've already made sure that his important documents are in one place. His medicines and first aid kit are in containers that can easily be grabbed and packed. And, oh yes, prayers. I've never stopped praying that the Philippines, especially my loved ones, be spared from anything horrible.

And after all these, I want to emphasize once again: I do not wish to claim a full comprehension of the enormity of 9/11. I cannot or will not FULLY understand the emotions behind it.

But my being human had me choked up with emotion when US President Barack Obama talked about how Bin Laden's death can't really bring to justice the void 9/11 left to families who have since tried to live without their loved ones. I can't, for the life of me, fully imagine how they managed to live the following day, the following week, and month, and year, without their fathers, mothers, husbands, wives, sons, daughters.

Then again, I'm fully capable of empathy. This, I'd like to believe, is the next best thing. I'm a wife to my husband. I'm a daughter to my father. I'm a friend, a co-worker, a colleague, a neighbor, a niece. I have a husband, a father, friends, colleagues, neighbors. Any one of us can die at any time due to both natural and unnatural causes. And if I or my loved ones or colleagues die because of evil men, I know, or (would) know, that someone like me, will come to this same stunned realization that I currently have. However late my tears seem to be, the very fact they're there symbolize that at least I won't be deemed a loveless coward like Bin Laden who, to the very end, just had to hide behind a human shield as members of the US Marines gave him an option to surrender.

I surrender to my being human. I care. I empathize. I feel. I think. I love.