Processing Pain
Listen
to this Commentary! By
Belia Mayeno-Choy  When
my Grandmother shook me awake on the morning of September 11th
and told me of the hijackings and crashes, I couldn't feel a
thing. I didn't want to let go of the way I thought before the
attacks happened -- my belief in the permanence of steel, and
cities, and the impenetrable power of America. I pushed all
the sights of exploding buildings, wreckage and people jumping
from windows to somewhere deep inside of myself. The images
just sat there heavily, next to ignored nightmares and all the
other things in my life that were too large and too painful
to acknowledge.
Recently,
a good friend of mine was shot 15 times and often it's been
a struggle not to hate his unknown killers. The hardest thing
about wanting to place blame is you can start to hate everybody
because it could be anybody. A few days after the terrorist
attacks, as stories emerged about individuals lost in the rubble,
I began to understand what it means to multiply my anger and
grief and confusion over my friend's death by thousands. For
a second I held onto all of it, and I understood what it feels
like to lust for revenge.
But
my desire for retaliation didn't last. I know that killing my
friend's murderers won't bring him back, and bombing Afghanistan
won't suddenly rebuild New York. It's not just about American
lives. People in other parts of the world suffer losses like
this too, some with much more regularity. Some have been so
hurt that they can dance in the streets when they hear of the
attack on America. And even while I cried because there are
people who kill to get their way, I saw that beneath all of
the terror and fear there is an opportunity to change the way
our country interacts with the rest of the world. We can side
with the politicians calling this an "act of war."
We can call for revenge on those who attacked us out of revenge,
undoubtedly causing foreign civilians to suffer just the way
our own did. But to do so will only perpetuate the evil we say
we want to destroy.
-- Belia Mayeno-Choyis from Berkeley, California.
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