An American in London

"The loss of life today breaks my heart, and I have found that the wounds from September the 11th, almost four years old, are still so incredibly raw in some ways."

By Chrystal Lacey

I live and work in a town called Reading, which is about a half-hour outside of London. The bombings happened this morning around 9am, and I didn't even know anything was amiss until around 11. When the news did start to filter in, it was slow and in hushed tones.

It’s amazing how yesterday people were running around the office gleefully proclaiming that we had beat the French in hosting the 2012 Olympics. One day later, something awful has happened and nobody even talks about it.

I came to the UK early this winter, after graduating from my Master’s program in December. I have been working as a temp at the same place for four months now. I'm here on a BUNAC visa, which is a student exchange visa for people who want to work while abroad. I fell in love with the city when I was here studying abroad, and I fell in love with Peter, my fiancé. London has a huge sentimental value for me. And in a way, London is my second home.

So, as you can imagine, it has been a strange experience being an American in the UK during these attacks. I have to admit, every time I checked the BBC's website to read more about what was going on, I got choked up and had to distract myself. The loss of life today breaks my heart. And I have found that the wounds from September the 11th, almost four years old, are still so incredibly raw in some ways.

Today's events brought on a powerful and dramatic flashback. Every thought and emotion I felt on 9-11 came racing back and smacked me in the face. In a way, I am amazed that these emotions ran so deep. Then again, I was born and raised in New Jersey and I happened to be in Washington, D.C. at the time everything happened. I was right there in the center of it all. And to see all this happen here, in a place I’ve grown to call home, all the emotions and fear came creeping back to haunt me. The feelings of complete helplessness, loss of control, and being worried sick about the ones I love, have brought me back to the same emotional spot I was at on 9-11.

The media attention didn't help soothe me either, if anything it made it worse. The blunt, explicit, straight-forward reporting style of the BBC left nothing for the imagination. For me, the most disturbing images and reports so far have come from the bus that exploded. Not the pictures of the bus itself, but of the surrounding buildings splattered with blood and the scene soon after the explosion occurred. The pictures take your breath away, and it is impossible to believe that people on the top deck actually survived. Yet, the BBC says that after the bomb was detonated and the smoke cleared, witnesses reported seeing survivors standing on the top deck, covered in blood.

My office didn't react at all the way I would expect it to either, considering how many people in our company are constantly in and out of London. One of the girls in my department was actually in the middle of the city today, and yet there was a strange calmness and order about the entire office. I think this is part of the stiff upper lip British culture. Sure, people freaked out a bit and worried about their families, but once they got in touch with them, they just got on with things. They just “carried on.”

The patriotism of the Brits is very difficult to understand- I haven't even begun to try. Patriotism here is not "bad" or "wrong," it's just very different from what we as Americans think of as patriotism. To be patriotic in the U.K., you don't have to hang a flag up outside your house or line your cars with bumper stickers. Rather, it is a very deep, tacit yet wholly patriotic attitude that is very difficult to accurately explain to anyone who hasn't witnessed it first hand. While Americans are more apt to outwardly proclaim the pride they have for their country, the British don't feel they need to display their patriotism in the same way-- which in circumstances like these may or may not help in soothing the reactions to the situation.

Words cannot fully describe how heinous today's bombing have been. Perhaps the worst part of today is how each of the places that were shown on television are completely recognizable. I’ve been there and have actually walked in the places that have been terrorized. I could have been there today- anyone of us could have, and that is the unfortunate reality that we all live with every day. In the end, I find hope and am greatly comforted by the outpour of concern and human kindness, even in the darkest of hours.