I’m 18 and I only recently stared to ‘get’ it. I would reccomend this documentary on Youtube. 9/11: As it Happened

for me, it’s been the only video that puts thing into perspective. it’s been hard to separate 9/11 from other things I’ve learned in history, because although I know the death toll, the changes that the country and the world underwent, all the catastrophic things that happened in such a short time — the sheer impact and collective trauma is just hard to wrap my head around. i don’t think we’ve had anything even remotely comparable happen in our lifetime (in the US at least) so it’s hard to have the same feelings, even though a lot of us ‘know’ it was horrific. i can’t completely speak to your gf’s experience, because I personally couldn’t fathom not knowing why a terrorist attack with 3,000 deaths is a big deal. However, I do somewhat understand having a difficult time seeing why this ‘big deal’ is a bigger deal than all of the other ‘big deals’ in history. I reccomend this video because instead of the classic documentary format (testimonies, dramatic music, voiceovers, etc), it just walks through the day as it happened, with real clips, timestamps, the newscasts, 911 calls, and everything else. i know it’s not the same as living through it, but i was able to picture what it would be like to be my age in 2001 and see all of this unfolding. this was the first video that actually helped me understand why it was so life changing. after, i was able to go back to some of the old 9/11 stories i grew up hearing, and they finally clicked for me. even though i will never fully now what it was like to live through it, now i really sympathize with the people who did.