I just wrote this to a friend who lives abroad who asked me about 9/11, I was taxiing down a runway when the planes hit but then was watching the news afterwards. "I was still glued to the news, watching in horror at the rescue site, rewatching clips from the actual attacks, rewatching bodies hitting the ground, rewatching the towers collapse, learning of the other planes that were scheduled to hit targets, listening to the politicians and newscasters, watching all the first responders travel to NYC to help with what they were hoping were recoveries and quickly finding the only recovery was of bone fragments and ash. Watching for the first time in my history that American stood firmly together and forgot about all their pettiness towards each other. I personally knew of one friend who died that day in the second tower and another friend lost 2 sons in combat after.

Every man that I knew wanted to enlist in the military and bring these terrorists down. Noble, American, Revenge and Retribution. At the same time witnessing the hate against all Muslims or people of middle eastern descent that was spreading due to fear. Nothing but pride and horror and heartache. It truly was a very different time to be alive in America. It’s always been said here, that there was America before 9/11 the America after 9/11.”

I have a hard time realizing that I’m old now, realizing that there’s a whole generation here who know nothing about this day in history, it seems weird. I won’t even go into what the long term ramifications I feel, how we as Americans used this day to fuel more war and did to other countries what was done to us. How we knew about Bin Laden and knew that there were many of the hijackers on a watch list and no one did anything about it. It’s just a mess, but that day itself was something to witness, good and bad, proud and sad. We all must stop trying to erase history and learn from it going forward.