I Was an Australian Teenager on September 11, 2001
The story of the attacks ricocheted loudly on the other side of the world
I wasn’t going to write this because as someone who was an Australian citizen living in Australia at the time, I didn’t want to take away from the stories of other Americans, but I was encouraged to write this anyway.
I was seventeen years old and had just run away from home when the events of September 11, 2001 happened. Even 10,000 miles away, the emotional shrapnel blew into the house.
I was so caught up in myself and my own misery that I hadn’t actually thought about how the world was fucked up for more than just me. I wasn’t the only one haunted by the past, and dreading the future.
I had just gotten back home from work, when I saw the news on my housemate Katie’s TV. The house was hers, I was staying in one of her bedrooms because it was close to my job.
When I went to work that morning in my blue chambray uniform shirt to work at the discount store in the shopping center, trapped in the world inside my head.
I couldn’t make sense of what I saw at first, and after I focused enough to listen, terror coursed through my body and I slumped down onto the couch, my heart racing. Katie gave me a hug, as I started crying.
We are going to war.
We have to defend America. America is Christian.
Muslims are evil.
We are going to be perseucted for our faith and so will our brothers and sisters in America be.
I’m going to stand up for God even if they kill me, and they will.
This is God’s judgment because of the evil gays.
America has sinned, but I don’t want my friends to be killed.
Islam is a hateful, violent religion.
How dare anyone do this.
I want to blow their brains out.
Why didn’t God stop this?
America is going to be desolate and lost. What will my friends there do?
They must have killed too many unborn babies.
God is good all the time and all the time God is good.
Anything short of an eternity in hell is better than I deserve and better than we deserve.
God ordained this so that the wicked would get to hell quicker.
I’m so scared.
Why would anyone do this?
The thoughts didn’t stop, and this had nothing to do with my still undiagnosed ADHD. I was pro-war in those days, after all, I was seventeen and highly impressionable.
I wished I had gone against my father’s wishes and joined the army reserve, because then I could fight in what I perceived to be a holy war and help those who lived in the promised land flowing with milk and honey: the United States of America.
I wanted to volunteer to go and wage war against those who were different to me based on the teachings of an arrogant, white, American man in his 30’s. Isn’t it interesting that when these “missionaries” were “called” to Australia, that it was only in the nice, tropical, coastal places?
I sobbed giant, heaving cries. I was grieving for my friends, and for who I thought God was. I was filled with prejudice and my own moral judgments based on what my pastor taught.
I was going to fight in the Lord’s Army with my fellow Independent Fundamental Baptists and destroy the enemy. I was going to help take dominion of the United States for Jesus Christ, so that I could return to Australia and do it there, too.
I’m thankful that my perceptions weren’t reality, and that I didn’t have a chance of going to America to fight a holy war in the first place, that Muslims are not my enemy, that war is not the way to solve problems, that I now know that God loves LGBTQ people, that abortion didn’t cause this tragedy, and that I met Jesus.
