We'll never forget.

It's been nine years, and yet it still feels so much more recent.

(source)

I was in third period art class in high school when my teacher got off the phone and just looked.. desolate. Upset. Confused. All she said was that something happened, they think it's terrorists, but nothing was certain. Ten minutes later our dean announced over the PA system, to all the classrooms and in all the hallways, "A plane crashed into one of the twin towers this morning. Another one just crashed into the second tower...."

Massive confusion. Hysteria. I lived on Long Island at the time, our high school about 45 minutes east of the city; countless students had parents who worked in the city, in or near the World Trade Center, my mom being one of them. No one could get through to their families because all the phone lines were so tied up.. I just remember all the confusion.

I remember what I was wearing: a plum long sleeved shirt with black jeans. The craziest part to me was that my friends and I were just at the beach two days earlier, and the sky was so clear that we could actually see the twin towers in the distance.. incredibly faint, but still there nonetheless. Now they were becoming piles of ash and rubble.

My one friends dad was in the city and had to walk halfway home, across the Brooklyn Bridge with thousands of other workers. Another friends dad was late to a meeting at the World Trade Center, and avoided disaster by mere minutes. My mom was fine and not in the city that day, but she has developed a social work practice that heavily focuses on clients with PTSD from 9/11 in particular.

I also remember attending a memorial service that night.. how quiet it was outside. How ironically clear the sky was and how many stars there were. To me, it was another star for every life lost that day. It still haunts me.. any images of the planes or the towers imploding or stories of that day bring tears to my eyes. Every. single. time.

September 11, 2001.. we truly will never forget.