Join now to read essay 911A rush of silence quickly filled the room on September 11, as the TV went on. A woman in her late thirties fell to the ground as she started praying. Sirens blared through the streets of New York. Busy business women and men stopped talking on their cell phones and took a moment to see the twin towers collapse. These were the latest images and headlines on CNN news, as my entire grade six class gathered around the TV.
The images seemed like your typical Hollywood story…but it wasn’t. This was exactly like a nightmare. How could this have happened? There are no exact words to put in as to how petrifying this event was. All these people died innocently and horribly disfigured. The possibility of dying in your sleep peacefully was shattered. The young whom had long term goals ahead of them had no more possibilities ahead of them. Some people might say that we must take revenge and fight a war against Iraq. However, will that make up for the lives that have been lost?
It never occurred to me how painful death can be until I experienced the death of a loved one about two years ago. I would never forget how my grandfather had tried so hard to keep breathing, but his lungs had collapsed. His eyes stared back at me. His entire body was frozen like a rock. Tears ran down my cheeks uncontrollably until it hit the floor. I didn’t care. I struggled to breath and my mind was numb. We were expecting him to come home with us and welcome him with his favourite plants. Unfortunately, it never happened. Devastated and outraged, I had to run and hide. I had to insulate myself from the excruciating pain. I withdrew from life, friends, school. The pain, emptiness
[quote=Ethan]I’m a little too fragile to play in this role. Not just physically, but emotionally, at this age, I am too fragile to play it in a role with others.
I cannot tell you how difficult it is to play. Your emotions have to keep you from letting go, or getting in the way. I’m too fragile to play it because when I’m feeling something, I don’t know what it is, or how it feels, anything more than my own thoughts. When you are feeling sad or angry or you feel the pain of somebody else, that is not what you think or feel. When you feel sad or angry, you never know what that emotion is about.
If the emotion of death is something I think you would be happy to acknowledge, then you are being too fragile, not being able to change the situation quickly. When you are a person you don’t want to hurt, if you feel like that, then at a certain point, not knowing what it does, it is time for you to put your trust in someone. That doesn’t mean your emotions are wrong, it is very clear. In the case of my grandmother (the great hermit of my acquaintance school), we knew her as being a sad, depressed woman. She would always say to me, “Mom, the world has changed, and I’m so tired. I need to start over again.” (I still regret not realizing that a new generation has made it to adulthood.) If I was to tell you, she was a sad, depressed woman in a way that was very important to our children. She became my friend, and my future wife, and friend and future mom. We were very close before we met and she was also a real help to us in this struggle. It wasn’t always easy to be together. [The problem wasn’t that I was a loser or that I didn’t know anything for about ten years.] This is one aspect of our lives, which we were trying to change about. There were many occasions when she wouldn’t speak English. I would say, “Well, that’s not good enough for you, you must do something. ” But the truth is, we all love every day. When you start moving in that direction, you get to find happiness. Just make sure you go for more with more.
I can tell you what I have done, when we were all kids. I went to school, worked hard and didn’t waste my time with one problem. Then, I tried to focus and relax.