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I'm just going co copy-paste my post from this day on 2002, because I didn't make a post in 2001.


When I found out about the crashes, it was at the very end of third period. English class was just finishing. Mrs. Wagner was called out of the room by another teacher. I think I was arguing with Adam about something.

She came back in and announced that two planes had been flown into the Twin Towers and a bomb had gone off at the Pentagon. No one really said anything for a few moments. I remember weakly saying "Okay, what's the punchline?" The bell rang and everyone dispersed. My next class was math and no one was paying attention to numbers. Finally Mr. Armstrong let us turn on the TV. I saw the second tower collapse.

I cried during gym because I was afraid for my friends down in Suffern. I was scared that they might have had family working there, or visiting, or god forbid, been on a field trip or something...

My parents had left that morning to go to a Continuing Education class in Springfield. By the time I got home, so had they. I wasn't allowed to talk about it or watch the news around my sisters. I went into my room and pretty much glued myself to the news stations out of some mixture of absolute horror and morbid curiosity. Julia and Rachael came in and watched for a few minutes. They didn't listen when I told them to leave, because they said they'd heard about it at school.

I went online and talked to some people who were on. I remember that we were all so scared. This wasn't like anything we'd ever experienced before, even if most of us lived nowhere near the crash areas. The United States was being attacked- that wasn't an idea that fit very well into our heads. That wasn't supposed to happen. We were the good country, right? We helped out the little countries, we were friends with other good countries. We just didn't know what the hell was happening.

One of the girls had gone to school a few blocks from the towers. She said they'd been under lockdown.

I cried a lot that day and the days after that.



My dad went down to Ground Zero twice and it fucked him up. It gave him PTSD, people are saying that the stuff in the air down there caused his autoimmune disorders, and it triggered his depression like nothing I've seen before or since. Him getting fucked up fucked our family up a little bit. Nothing as bad as my parents getting divorced or anything, but he got really strict and overbearing. And he didn't have an option about going, the Salvation Army told him he had to go. So it's their fault he got fucked up, and now they just dropped him like they're not responsible for what happened. Fuck all of them.

Anyway... I'm just avoiding Facebook today because I've already seen one asshole post a picture of the towers with smoke streaming out of them. We all know what happened today, jackass, you don't need to show us again. And I can't trust the rest of the people I'm friends with to not be assholes, so... just no Facebook.

Which means I should focus on my homework, I have three reading responses for Environmental Sustainabilty, have to watch a movie and read a book AND write a paper for Gender Power Lit & Film, and have to read two chapters for Biopsych. Oh, and I have to write a poem by Tuesday noon. I just don't have enough time to do all my homework and do all the thesis work I'm supposed to be doing and do all the clubs I want to do... but I would rather drop a class than drop any clubs. That's probably bad, isn't it?