Jack Laurence

What if they were in fact part of a known terrorist organisation and an organisation that were known for beheadings and violence of unspeakable magnitudes?

What if you were being held captive by the Taliban?

Next time on What I Survived.

We all carry something we can't put down.

Maybe it's something someone did to you, something that was taken, a moment where the world revealed itself to be more cruel, more random or dangerous than you wanted to believe.

A grudge, an anger, a hurt.

And once you know that, once you've seen it, felt it and survived it, you have a choice to make.

You can let it boil inside you, let it become the lens through which you see everything else, let the person who hurt you continue to hurt you, year after year, long after they've even forgotten your name.

Or you can do the harder thing.

You can talk about it until the words lose their venom.

You can look directly at what happened and refuse to let it own you.

You can even, and this is the part that seems impossible,

Try to understand the person who did it.

Not forgive, necessarily, not forget, but understand.

When Michael Thexton came home from Pan Am Flight 73, he would have to make a choice about what to do with what had happened to him.

However, before that choice, he first had to survive what was about to be an explosive end to a siege that had lasted over 15 hours.

Chapter 9.

You could tell something was going to happen.

As Michael walks towards the rear of the plane, he notices that it's far darker and stiflingly warm, as the ground power unit that is used to power the plane while on the ground was slowly shutting down.

The leader of the group had taken his weapon and unloaded an entire magazine into the first few rows that were filled with terrified passengers.