Eleven years

I was barely on time with waking up that morning eleven years ago. I was always bad at waking up at a realistic time for the things I had to do in the day, hell, I still am. By the time I got myself downstairs, the shit had already hit the fan. The T.V. was on, the house was dead quiet aside from the newscasters. I had never even heard of the World Trade Center, I had heard of New York, the Empire State Building and the Statue of Liberty, but a center for global commerce was far out of my freshly middle-school mind.

It's hard to see something for the first time when it's in a state of destruction. As far as I knew, it could have always been on fire (A silly idea to think, but the first experience of something sticks with me far more than it should). My sister was probably in the same boat as me, I can't be certain because I'd be lying if I said I remembered everything about that morning. It's all a painted blur to me with a few clear strokes stuck in sporadically. The most profound recollection I have from that day was sitting in homeroom, hell, I think it must have been every class that we just sat in silence, watching the television. Some of the kids were crying, they were scared, but they had every right to be.

What I remember most is the aftermath, the slough of finger pointing, the rage, the hate, the misconceptions. This isn't me trying to tell you who's right, who's wrong, or that the towers fell faster than explainable by gravity. This is me trying to understand what this event means to me, how the aftermath has molded me and how the ordeal in its entirety will affect me as I live out my life.