.9.11.

i wasn't living in new york on 9/11/01.

it is one hour until 9/11/10, and i sit in my 350 sqft apartment in the lower east side thinking about the moment that (dare i say?) defined our generation. or at the very least, separated my generation from so many others. changed everything. when my kids are old enough to learn about it in school, they will one day be asking me where i was when 9/11 happened. and i will have this brief recall of my memory to show them.

i remember waking up that morning. i was leaving for my freshman year of college in a week, and was living at my parents house anxious to get up to san luis obispo where i would begin my new, adult life. i remember walking out of the room i shared with my sister to see the TV on in the playroom outside our bedroom. still bleary-eyed with sleep, i couldn't quite make out what was on the screen. it just looked like fuzz. dust. a grey cloud. i continued down the hall to my parents room. the TV was on, but they weren't in there. again, the same channel. same grey cloud, now disappating just enough to show a video clip of a plane crashing into one of the world trade center buildings. i walked downstairs and saw my parents in front of the family room TV. watching. my mom crying. my dad in silence. we didn't speak. the video clip played over, and over, and over...

i'm pretty sure i stayed in the same room, in the same position on the couch in my pajamas that day with my family. watching various news channels, and just being with them. more reports kept coming of the horror. the two planes in NY, one in PA, and one at the pentagon. if i recall, i was awake early enough to see the second building fall. or maybe it was taped. that whole day was a blur, and it all seemed like it was happening at once. one of the things i couldn't stop thinking about, was that i was leaving in a week, and this made it that much harder on my mother, to let me go.

nine years later, i've been to the site of ground zero a total of 3 times. once, 2 years after it happened when you could literally walk up to the gate and see what was left. i remember my friend becky and i didn't know how to pose for the picture in front of it. do we smile? frown? cry? so many emotions, it was hard to feel much of anything other than crushing empathy and sadness. the other two visits have been while friends or family have been in town. but i prefer not to go there.

i'm not sure why i have such a hard time with it. i've always posessed an enormous amount of empathy, and a lot of feelings. so imagining anything about it overwhelms me with emotion. i have never been able to watch any specials about it, any hollywood made movies, any documentaries. i can't make it through them without sobbing.it's jut interesting how for some reason this global event has affected me more than some of my personal life's harshest moments. and even as i've grown and moved on from those, this one i can't seem to shake. it's hard to talk about. hard to think about. hard to write about without tears streaming down my face (as, you can imagine, it is happening right now). maybe i'm trying to internalize it and make it about me again. in this case, i hope so, because maybe it'll help to get over it. (it's not about me, it's not about me).

or maybe it's because i always knew deep down i'd end up in new york city. maybe it's because i myself had a terrorist scare in london all those years ago. whatever it is, maybe next year i'll be able to deal.

after all, this is my home now.