The girl on the left
Her story
I’m the girl on the left laughing, black cardigan open over purplish shirt holding card. That photo was taken on my birthday three weeks before 9/11.
Survival is about continuing to live with the complexity of all of it. It’s about letting myself be fully human, even when that humanity doesn’t fit the script people expect.
So, if I can tell you anything with conviction, it’s this:
Your story belongs to you.
Not to silence. Not to stoicism.
Not to the world’s hunger for resilience.
Or to the worlds need to retell it to understand where you were during the situation and the how or why or where or what time ….
You get to decide. Stay silent and/or voice your emotions, your truths, your story.
Whatever you want. Because The story, your story, belongs to you. And my story, It belongs to me. And only I decide how — or if — it gets told.
Hi- my name is Christina
This is my picture… MANY will recognize me or believe they know me, from this picture. –
This picture, MY PICTURE, the original is mine, has been copied and circulates EVERY YEAR for the past 24 years, BEGINNING MID AUGUST THROUGH MID SEPTEMBER and will most likely continue to circulate every year till who knows when, with the same wrong information.
No matter I’ve corrected it, finally, by reclaiming my voice.
So let’s go back and begin again….
9/11 survivor.
Yes that’s me. Survivor #0001.
That was my number. First survivor to call in (from my company) on that fateful day. And when people hear that I’m a 9/11 survivor, they usually want to put me in one of two boxes. Either I’m the one who stays silent… who wasn’t able to get over it, move on and kept going.
“She doesn’t like to speak about it, leave her alone, don’t ask, she has trauma from it.”
Or I’m the “resilient hero” — the one who overcame everything, can discuss it or, retell it and was able to use it for my own type of inspiration.
Honestly? I am both, and more, and neither. And, a part of me, thanks these people for trying to empathize and trying to give me a place to fit. But, not one box fits me.
Surviving something like that doesn’t leave you with a neat, one-line story. It leaves you with contradictions. Especially when you remain silent and allow others, who were not there that day, who lived worlds away, who weren’t born yet, but believe they KNOW your story, try to retell it for you, so you don’t have to.
And it leaves you with contradictions when you speak, to try to correct the misconceptions and the misinformation. But that’s all ok too.
The truth is, I can be many things all at once. And some of it, is with thanks to these very people who try to retell the story, who don’t even know me. I can be grateful to be alive and still carry guilt. I can feel strong and broken — at the very same time and in the very same breath. I can want to tell my story so very badly and still want to keep parts of it just for myself.
So for me… reclaiming agency isn’t about picking one side of that binary. It’s about refusing the binary altogether. My story doesn’t need to be tidy. It doesn’t need to fit into what makes other people comfortable. And it doesn’t need correction from the narration by others and what they “think” occurred and how they “think” I’ve been affected. Sometimes reclaiming my voice means speaking out. AND Sometimes it means staying quiet. AND MOST IMPORTANTLY, sometimes it means admitting — out loud — that I don’t have closure… and maybe, or most probably, I never will.
And that’s okay. Because survival isn’t just about “moving on” and saying that out loud or “being strong.” Or holding it in, staying silent and being resilient.
We want to express our gratitude and appreciation to Christina for allowing us to share her story with all of you, our readers.