Dad’s Guide to Life: The Twiin Towers

Dear Boys,

If I can pinpoint one moment in time that changed my entire world, it was September 11th, 2001. I’m pretty sure, there are many people who can say that, others who can’t because they died from the event trying to save people, and many others who were there when it happened. For me, it was jarring. I was living a comfortable, selfish little life.

I graduated Highschool in 1997. In 1998, I failed out of my first college. I left high school knowing I had to do better, one year later, I was doing worse. I started my adulthood, $10,000 dollars in debt. Computers and internet were the latest rage. I spend the summer of 1997, unlike every summer before that, indoors. I got my first computer for my 18th birthday, and a year of America Online. AOL. The first major internet service provider. I spent about 15 hours a day on Netscape web browser looking at pictures of celebrities and chatting it up with girls across MA in “Boston Chat”. I discovered my first MMO, or Massive Multiplayer Online game, called “Earth 2025”, which still exists in a community built version of the game from my college years. It was text based, no graphics, and completely awesome. I was hooked, but I was also capable of making even more bad decisions. Instead of doing school work, I spent my time in the computer lab, with my friends, skipping class, then going to work at the restaurants to earn money. Eventually, I missed too many classes, and I flunked out of my first college.

After what I did in High School, I didn’t think I could get worse. It got worse. I took 1999 off from school, and I focused on winning over my high school girlfriend who I had been cheating on for awhile, and quitting smoking cigs, reefer, and not drinking any booze. I accomplished one of those things. I stopped smoking reefer. I cut open my hand one night at work, my boss brought me to the hospital, and after I was done there, Michelle and I went to a friends, and her boyfriend over came over with a huge “blunt”. I took one hit of that thing, and threw up for next six hours straight. I don’t know why, but I have never smoked reefer since, minus the occasional puff every six or seven years. At any rate, in 1999, I spent the year working, playing in various bands, and trying to get myself together and prepare for Y2K, when all the computers clocked in at 00 and launched all the nukes... In the fall of 1999, I decided to head back to college, and give it the “ol college try”. So I went to Baystate college in Boston, and started focusing on my life. I got my overall Grade Point Average up from the 1.8 it was at Bridgewater, to a 3.2, and I became eligible to transfer to UMASS DARTMOUTH, and play on the football and baseball teams, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves here. 2000 came and went without a nuclear war, in fact, all the computers were fine, and everyone was fine and nothing happened, then….

I finished at Baystate in the fall of 2001. I didn’t get my degree because I dropped a class about marriage and families that required group work, and I didn’t want to deal with being in groups because I knew myself. I didn’t want that kind of distraction. That was somewhat of a mistake. BUT, the endgame wasn’t a two year degree, it was a four year degree, so I dropped the class and started setting my sights on UMASS and the four year college girls and a bachelors degree in computer science.

On September 11th, Tuesday morning, American Airlines Flight 11 and United Airlines Flight 75, crashed into the World Trade Center Twin Towers, and of course, a “plane” hit the pentagon, and another crashed in Pennsylvania, which was speculated to be headed toward the White House in Washington D.C. I woke up at 8:45am that morning, and with the blink of an eye, everything I ever thought about wanting, was over. I turned my attention to the world at large. I was SHOCKED into noticing the world around me. I remember it like it happened yesterday. I woke up, got off my matress, went to the kitchen and got some pop tarts, and my mother was glued to the tv. I glanced, kept walking, stopped in my tracks, and took a double take. What I saw was a building with giant clouds of black smoke coming out of it. My mother looked up and said, “Turn on the TV, a plane just hit a building in New York!”. I went into my room, turned on the news, there I stayed glued. “What a horrible accident I thought.” At 9:02 am, I watched on LIVE TV, a 2nd plane, hit the second tower of The World Trade Center in New York City. I immediately panicked and called my girlfriend and Boston, who was living at Suffolk University, she didn’t answer. “Get out of Boston, get out of the city NOW.”, I left a message on her voicemail. “We’re under attack!” , I called out to my mother. I stayed glued to the news, for days and days. I didn’t sleep, I had to set alarms to remember to eat, and there I sat, watching everything unfold. My girlfriend was home safe, by the way. A few days after, we went to Guy’s house, and we stood in the street, in unity with the entire country, at 8 o’clock at night, and held a candle for nearly 3000 people who died. It was the first time in my life, I felt “AMERICAN”. I felt like I was united with every human in the country. I felt united against a common enemy, as we had just found out that “Al quaida was behind the attacks. Osama Bin Laden did it they said. We weren’t at Guy’s to hold a candle, we were there to say goodbye. Our friends were leaving to train to go fight Osama Bin Laden across the world. I have been friends with your “UNCLE” Guy for 20 plus years, and I feared I’d never see him again.

I had been accepted to UMASS Dartmouth in 01. I started football training maybe a week after 9/11, then classes started. I couldn’t focus. I quit the football team. I walked off the field and never looked back. I never told anyone that before. I always lied and said I got hurt. But I couldn’t quite figure out how to get my own shit back together after I watched people jumping off the world trade center, and then thinking of all those people inside as each building fell in on top of itself. I also couldn’t focus on sports or school because something didn’t feel right about how the buildings fell. We can’t really get into that today, but I don’t buy the story. They fell STRAIGHT down, as if by controlled demolition. Then I started thinking, how did a sickly skinny guy a million miles away, who lives in a cave, coordinate and fund a major terrorist operation inside the United States and hijack multiple planes and train all the hijackers to fly for a year before the attack? Then I was no longer watching the news. Now I went digging. Another bad decision. I went down the rabbit hole. I flunked out of school after my first year, too tired to go to class, between work and staying up all night trying to find out if the US government initiated the terrorist attacks and trying to find anything to prove that what they told me, was a lie. But we cant get into that….

How did it put me into a place that had me forgetting about my goals and dreams, and putting me on a path to a life changing discovery? Well, I spent so much time looking for lies, that I stopped paying attention to my girlfriend, that I worked so hard to win over from all the cheating and emotional abuse I put her through. I just stopped caring about that. I started watching the security state grow bigger and bigger and bigger that I spent all my time trying to convince my social network(on MYSPACE), that the US GOVT did it. This made things pretty lonely, I started losing friends. I began to realize that the “War on Terror” that this sparked, was never going to end. I read the bible cover to cover, I watch the news, those people have been fighting over that area for thousands of years, and we just sent our troops over there. This pushed me furthur away from the God of major religions. So many people died on September 11th, 2001, “in the name of God”….but he loves us. So he sends people that have a different religion over to kill us? Doesn’t make sense.

Fear took over America. Terrorist attacks across the planet erupted. Random people walking around shooting Americans in the middle of the road, bombings, suicide bombers, All sorts of crazy stuff going on. I was gripped by fear. I didn’t want to fly, I didn’t want to take trains, I didn’t want to go near a major city. I shut myself off to the world. Who can live like that?

I mean look at it all right now, the “war on terror”, is STILL going on in Afghanistan, and many other countries around it. It’s been 20 years! And we will be there well into the next 20 years because we are fighting an enemy, who simply wants us to go home, and have been fighting invading armies for a 1000 years, they will not stop, until we go home and leave them alone.

I could go on an on about this topic, but let’s get to the meat of this thing. September 11th created a life of constant fear of a boogy man. Someone could be lurking around every corner, with a bomb, or a gun, or a whatever and kill me because I am free. I became programmed to be afraid. And if we learn anything in this journal, it’s that FEAR, motivates actions, and they’re not usually good actions when motivated by fear. I was scared into not living, but stopping, and rethinking whether or not I should do anything, because a terrorist might get me.

I lived this way for two years, afraid…those two years eventually wore me down to nothing. I lost my girlfriend, I lost my apartment, I lost my job, I lost my drive, I lost my fire, I lost everything that made me amazing, and I cowered in fear. All while trying to prove that a life of fear was something the government had planned all along, I just needed proof to let go.

You have to be able to live through fear. See past it. 9–11 opened my eyes to the size of the world. It was so big. And over the last 19 years since 9–11, Ive realized that the chances of some terrorist ever coming near me, or the government coming to get me, or getting sick from some crazy flu, was SO SMALL, that I just have to live the best I can, and not be afraid, or I will be too paralyzed to live a life, and die in fear, never having lived at all.

Face your fears, choose love. Love fights fear. Screw fear.

9/11 to this day impacts us all, with the war, enormous amounts of surveillance, lasting impacts on our way of life. You will never get on a plane without taking your shoes and belt off, I have flown, wearing all my clothes, and drinking a soda. Now you can’t even look at the plane without giving up your shampoo if they ask you. But it doesn’t impact me anymore. Im not afraid of terrorists, because I know that I need to live, and being scared, is just something we don’t have time for. (I also know there is still more to the story of September 11th), and it wont come out until the politicians involved, are dead, so they can’t get in trouble for what they did. (A story for another time, just do some digging boys.)

DO not live in fear.
FACE IT, and PUSH THROUGH IT. That’s the difference between living a life, and wasting a life.