We'Ll Never Come Out the Same

We’ll Never Come out the Same

Trauma is never felt the same way, nor conceived in the same fashion by anyone. All people experience the pains of our cruel world at some point, but sometimes the shock of the world being turned on its head is like the shock a fish feels when dunked into cold water. In the 9-11 attack of 2001, the people Charles Bernstein wrote about may not have even lost no one from the demolition of the World Trade Centers, but still felt something deep down, whether they knew it right away or not. While some people try to avoid grief entirely, later when the reality of the event sets in, many cannot help but become wrecked emotionally. Despite this, when the pains of the ordeal set in, we finally find how ugly wounds can really be. No matter what, when people have experienced such hurt, they never come out of it the same. When a horrific event first takes place, sometimes it can be in such blatant contrast with the convenient rhythm of our lives that we cannot even grasp what has actually occurred. Similar to how the story, It’s 8:23 in New York, shows how emotionally demanding events can be so out of context that the only way people are able to deal with them is to shut them out entirely. When you can’t even wrap your mind around the events of the present, them being inconceivable makes them all the more impossible to dwell on. Bernstein wrote the narrator in It’s 8:23 in New York, with an interesting way of coping, and that is to deny the events entirely. The eeriness of the whole situation puts his strange emotional reaction in complete contrast to the story Today is the Next Day of the Rest of your Life which shows a person who is really emotionally wrecked, as opposed to no emotions at all. Accordingly, the audience has no way to react but to become absorbed in the twisted sadness of the whole story. While some people shut out their emotions, and others feel the need to express everything, there is no right or wrong way to process human...