How to Remember

Last semester, I took a course about the Psychology of Terror and Terrorism. My professors showed the film United 93 on September 11th and 13th. I never want to see that film again. I felt sick watching the first half, the build up to the shot of second plane crashing into the second Tower, that makes me weep even seven years later.

My reaction to the film was visceral, emotional, physical. And seven years ago, I was safe with my family on the other end of the East Coast. After watching it, I experienced many of the things we'd talked about in class: flashbulb memories (remembering clearly where I was that morning) and intrustive thoughts (found myself remembering that day long after the credits for United 93 rolled).

As Americans, we were all traumatized by September 11th, to some degree. And we don't want to talk about it any more. We want to hide behind conspiracy theories, we want to sling political mud, we want to ridicule insincere patriotism... we want to forget.

We can't forget.

I'm not too far away from believing in the idea of a collective consciousness; the idea that we all as a nation are still traumatized. Similar things have been written about the Irish and the Great Famine--even centuries later, scholars contend that because no one wants to talk about the Famine and haven't wanted to since it happened, that the Irish haven't coped. Some scholars go as far as to point to the Famine when looking at Ireland's higher than usual alcoholism and domestic violence rates.

Certainly September 11th and the Great Famine are not comparable events; though both tragic, the nature of these tragedies are radically different. But I'm not so sure I can discount the idea that as a nation, we might all be headed for collective psychological side effects because we won't cope, we won't deal with 9/11. We laugh when Family Guy makes fun of how politicians use 9/11 in thier campaigns, we avoid looking at the pictures and video footage from that day. We want to blame all our problems on the Bush administration and we just want to forget.

Forgetting is not healing. Asking any trauma psychologist. And whether or not one of your friends or family members was on those planes or in those buildings, we were all victims, violated and terrified and completely helpless. The world could only watch as the world's only superpower shuddered.

But we can't. We can't forget because it isn't fair to those who died, to those who fought back, to those who attempted rescue. We can't forget because the world is changing, whether we want to keep up or not. We can't forget and become forever cynical. We can't forget because it isn't possible, no matter how hard we try.

Watching United 93 was traumatic because we try to bury the images. We want flee from the fear we felt, from the horror. It's the most basic of human instincts: fight or flight. Flee from what hurts, fight to survive. Writing this paper on the movie is tough; I don't want to revisit it, but in the case of these memories, which each of share, it is better to fight, to cope and heal, than to flee and forget.

I don't know if anything I've written here makes a lick of sense to a single soul out there. But I couldn't focus on my paper until I collected these thoughts. Perhaps you remember now where you were; perhaps you regret reading this since your smile disappeared; maybe you will try to forget.

Don't. You can't, anyway.