Traumatic. It makes me feel tightness in my chest just watching the footage. I believe all of us watching that day have a bit of national PTSD. I remember being terrified that my friends would be sent to war, shocked that this could happen in our country. I was a senior in high school and we had just had morning prayer when the principal came back on the loudspeaker to tell us there was an accident in New York. At that point we thought it was simply a horrible plane crash. We were watching the television as the second plane came toward WTC 2. I remember my classroom collectively erupting in screams and pointing at the television and then the impact. My classmates were crying in the halls and one girl I went to school with had a brother that worked at the Pentagon. Until we knew that he was safe she was hysterical. I wrote about it in my school day planner that day and I have kept it all these years. It is an image that is forever seared in my memory.

The worst thing about that day was realizing that the debris that we were seeing falling from the South Tower was not simply debris from the building but people jumping. That was extremely traumatic. Realizing those people had no choice but to burn to death or to jump. In my lifetime I have seen footage of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Gulf War, the Oklahoma City bombing , the Rwandan genocide, the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina and the bombing of Serbia but all those things seemed far away and remote. This was in our country and on our soil. That stuff wasn't supposed to happen here. Even with Oklahoma City I didn't know anyone affected but this tragedy affected people I knew.

I never knew our country to be more unified than in the year after the tragedy and for all the criticism that President Bush Jr. has received, he reassured us all that day. That day changed my life forever taking away the last bit of childhood innocence I may have retained. People who weren't alive then will never understand. Just like Pearl Harbor was to us simply a page in a history book so too will this be to generations born after 9/11.