2001-09-11 | 7:21 p.m.

I cannot even begin to describe the feeling of chaos and uncertainty everyone here is feeling - but most of all, helplessness. It's awful. Fucking utterly devastating. There were jet fighters flying over the city. And all I'm thinking is god help us all. Nothing will ever be the same. Between yesterday and today, everything is different.

Watching the footage of the plane crashing and the towers falling I dreaded the fear overtaking myself and others I saw. There are so many lives taken. And in the name of what? Religious extremism?! I don't think I'll ever be the same, and right now I feel that nothing good can come from this. I want to believe something will. But I don't think it will.

And I pray that the political leaders out now can keep their heads and make the correct decisions for the future. Because I don't want a war. I don't want to feel this terrified and this vulnerable. But I am going to keep my head held high. While I'm not an American, I am a Brazilian living in NYC. I've lived here for 8 years. And I will try to not panic. After all that's what these goddamn terrorists want. I'm not going to give them the satisfaction. Bastards that they are.

I also don't know what to say or feel about the fact that I heard President Bush use the phrase "hunt them down" repeatedly in his addresses to the country on this horrendous day. Not 'locate,' not 'find,'not 'ascertain the whereabouts of'. He means business. He means hunting people down. Every resource, every effort, from this very moment forward, will be trained on whomever did this and nothing else. They will hunt them down, they will find them, and when they do I fear to see what might happen. Because they better pray that their god has mercy on them. Right now, I think that the American government certainly won't.

I want to know how something like this can happen. How someone could do this. I have no answer to help me sleep tonight though. And that scares me. Scares me that there is such evil in this world. That this morning people were not spared. The lives of others were not thought about. And how the hell can this happen? I mean aren't we protected for something like this? What the fuck?! And while apparently this is over I am at home and I don't feel secure. I don't feel safe. And if we go to war in this day and age, we are so royally fucked. I would think we would have enough backing from the rest of the world but the nuclear power out there is just scary.

Everything right now is just scary. I've heard people say that this is the worst thing that has happened to this country since Pearl Harbor. But I think this is much worse. Only because these are civilians who never agreed to risk their lives just going to work in the morning. They woke up, got dressed and went to work. They didn't expect to die for their country while working their 9 to 5 jobs. And I believe we all lost something if we didn't lose someone. We've lost the respect. The love. The compassion. So what the fuck are we going to do now?



p r e v i o u s // n e x t