September 11th, 2001.

I know I've been MIA on here for a few days. So, this morning, while trudging through journal after journal on my favorites list this morning, I knew I couldn't wait until next year to post.

September 11th, 2001

Just an ordinary day. The fourth day of school. Four days away from my brother's wedding. I was excited because my then boyfriend would be accompanying me down the aisle. I remember noticing the sky that day, it seemed quiet, happy.

I was wrong.

Around 11:00 my teacher announced what had happened. Then the bells rang. And I went to lunch.

"World Trade Center?" I asked my friends. "Where is that?"

Before I knew it, I was in tears. I barely had a grasp on what was happening and watching everyone else freak out freaked me out. I consulted my history teacher. And it was with her, and in her classroom, that I witnessed history.

She made us watch the coverage, the pile of rocks that remained, the bones that were buried beneath them. The same footage played over and over in my mind, as it does even today, of the airplanes crashing at four different times, with one huge plan.

I have many conspiracies of my own, as most of us do, as to what the hell it is all about. And, we will never know. We can read what read, believe it if we want to, but I can't and I don't. Witnessing history on television and through family members who spent their last Christmas's in Iraq, can give to us the finality of endlessly searching for closure that we will never recieve. It's very rare that a history lesson is objective, but when you sit alone in your living room, glued to the TV, looking for answers beneath the debris and bodies and firemen's feet, that you recieve a true history lesson.

I have the newspapers from the weeks following the attacks. I would participate in the vigils, and, at my brother's wedding, we wore red, white and blue ribbons with our dresses. The big hole in our family photos will serve as a constant reminder of the losses endured at the trade center, the pentagon, and in the field, where the last plane crashed.

That night I laid in bed, sleepless, in fear of the war in my backyard. Trampled grass and mud and bullet shells cover the earth like a fresh blanket of snow. This is my country. This is my home. Look what you have done to it, I thought.

I can dress in red, white and blue. I can raise a flag above my house. I can pray for the families of those who perished, apologize for the gaping hole that is at the center of their families. I can volunteer to give out water to the crews working tirelessly night after night. I can sit back and soak up the devastation that lays ahead. That lays in a dusty pile at my feet. Or I can do nothing. And it was nothing that I felt I could do. My hands were tied. I was bound by the fear that overtook the country and left us each with the need to constantly look over our shoulders.

America is not the superpower.

America is not perfect, flawless. America is broken.

Words cannot recreate the plethora of emotions we all went through that day, and the many months following. We can look at our neighbor and silently say, "I know," with our eyes.

A nation that is so independant, so promising and so powerful was quiet that day. And it's not that there wasn't anything to say, it's just that we couldn't.

I am the mother who lost her child. I am the husband, without a wife. I'm the friend of a friend whose friend jumped out of the 35th floor. I am the dog that endlessly sniffed out the mangled remains of a human. I am the fireman, running on prayers, digging for solid ground. I am a nation digging for answers. I am an American. And I'm no longer scared to say that.