Post Traumatic

At the time of the attack, my little sister and I were playing in the garage with our dogs. My mother came to the door and called us in. She trembled just a little.

“Your father’s alright,” she kept saying. “He’s alright.”

There on the news was his work place, the Pentagon. In the side was a gaping hole—and in it: desks, chairs, rubble. My lungs turned to stone, my throat closed. The sorrow of hundreds of families I had never met was unbearably heavy on me as I thought of the grief my family had narrowly escaped. I studied my hands.

Even though my father was fine, the impression of doom clung to me like smoke after a fire. I jumped at the sound of a phone ringing, and listened hard to the side of conversation I could hear. Whenever someone told me there was bad news, I steeled myself for the worse. The terrorists had stopped for now, but the terror ate at my heart.

Over the years, I learned to push back the fear. You’re paranoid, I told myself. But still I would react with alarming speed to the smallest incidents. A word would set me off, and I would catch myself imagining the grief of a death in the family, or I would get wrapped up in a fantasy of planning a funeral. In desperation, I labeled my visions as a selfish desire to lead a more exciting life. You’re romanticizing death, I tell myself. It’s disgusting. Stop it.

Every time I left them, I wondered if this could be the last time. When I called on a daily basis, I pretended it was homesickness—but in truth I just wanted to know they were okay.

I can’t stop trembling.