haunted.

13 years ago today, I was sitting in Mr. Carswell's 3rd grade classroom at St. Michael's Independent School with not a worry in my mind.  I can still remember the words he said, as he told us there was something we needed to talk to our parents about when we got home...

I specifically remember walking up the front steps to my house after a friend dropped me off because my mom had jury duty, & seeing the tears streaking down my mom's face as she talked on the phone at the front door.  It didn't take long for me to understand why & see the smoke billowing out of the Twin Towers on the television & start crying too.

I'm not sure I completely understood what was happening, but I saw my mom crying, so the tears were instinctive & almost automatic for me.  For hours we stared at the screen in sobbing silence, listening to Enya's haunting lyrics, watching the bravest of firemen risk their lives in the toppling buildings & seeing fear-stricken faces of the people searching for their loved ones.

There were moments in my life when I felt scared... scared that the monster in my closet would conquer the pillow blockade while I slept, that snakes in my nightmares were actually slithering in my bed, & that each little noise I heard at night was a real a robber in my house, but at this moment, on September 11, 2001, in broad daylight, I was terrified.

It's scary that there are events in our lives that can haunt you for the rest of your life & that you will never forget.  For our grandparents & some of our parents, it was the "duck & cover" tactics, where they would hide under their desks for fear of nuclear attack with the Soviets in the 1940s and 50s.  When the siren went off, everyone would jump under their desks & just wait in deafening silence for the end of the world.  Then there was the assassination of John F. Kennedy in 1963, which our parents will never forget because of Jackie Kennedy's memorable pink dress & JFK Jr. saluting his father's casket at the funeral procession. In 1986, our older siblings probably remember watching the Challenger Space Shuttle take off with Christa McAuliffe, the first teacher in space, in it & seeing it explode in mid air.  I'm sure our parents can still hear the sound of millions of Americans gasping in unison.  In 2001, the haunting of my generation took place & I know it will be something that resonates strongly with me for the rest of my life.   

I was an ignorant 8 year-old, who believed that nothing bad could truly happen, but the attacks on 9/11 really changed something for me.  I saw innocent people murdered, I learned the words jihad & terrorist, I saw hearts break on national television, & saw how something could affect an entire country.  It was not a personal attack, but an attack on our country & one of the most incredible things I watched through the eyes of a child, was the way our country banded together & supported complete strangers.  Paired with being one of the worst days for our young country, it was also one of the most selfless. 

As I write this short post, I get chills across my entire body.  I don't think a feeling like this will ever go away nor do I have anything to compare it to.

I changed a little that day.  Not only did I gain empathy for human-kind, but a piece of me was lost in the World Trade Center rubble as well... the piece that will always be there because every year on this day, I can still feel it tugging at my heart.

I was not personally affected by September 11th.  No one in my family lost his or her life, no extended family members or family friends were there that day, but my heart goes out to everyone who lost someone.  You are all in my thoughts today.   

I will never never never ever forget.