It Started Off Like Any Other Day

I was walking to an early morning class and I was a jumble of nerves. The night before had been my boyfriend's 21st birthday. I was only 19 so I didn't want to be a drag on the festivities of the evening, since I knew the plan was a crawl through town. In my mind this was a huge sacrifice on my part, but in reality I had an early class the next day, had celebrated with him over the weekend, and was in the middle of sorority rush (before I was a Kappa). But I had this sick feeling in my stomach that bad was going to happen and I was so worried. He hadn't called me, like he promised he would, when he was safely home and I just knew this meant that he was either in bed with someone else or in the hospital.
 (What can say, I was a drama queen).

All these thoughts are racing through my mind and spilling out of my mouth, as I told my best male friend as we walked together. He said all the right things, but I could tell he was thinking I was acting nutsy. We walked into Morton and it was eerily quiet, we looked at the clock and it was a few minutes before 9am. As we got to our classroom I saw the tv turned on, there were students gathered around it. No one said anything, tears glistening in their eyes. Neither of us still had any idea what was going on, we saw the first tower on fire with a hole in the side, but the reality had yet to sink in.
And then we saw something else, it was like a horror movie where you're helpless to do anything but watch. The second plane zoomed into sight, obviously headed in the direction of the World Trade Center, and then it disappeared into the other tower, as though it had been swallowed whole. A ripple of cries, screams, and gasps went through the room and then the building.

Everything I had been worried about before left my mind, I was now convinced that this was the End of Days and the end of the world. No one on the news was able to give an explanation other then America was under attack. A few minutes later we learned that a plane had crashed into the Pentagon, which was only 90 minutes from Richmond. The next speculation we heard was that "they" were moving down the East Coast, and that the FED in Richmond was being evacuated, as the possible next target. Our cell phones wouldn't work and the Internet had crashed. I felt so helpless. But it got worse when they speculated that the next hit might be the nuclear power plant, which is in the Williamsburg zone or Camp Peary, in Williamsburg, which is a CIA training ground.
I felt trapped. Against the advice of my friends, I hopped into my car and drove home. No matter what happened, I wanted to be with my family. I was only a sophomore and we weren't allowed to have cars yet, I just happened to have mine because of rush. The roads were empty. I saw only a handful of cars on the hour drive to my house.

And we watched the news, listened to the stories, and then came the realization-the feeling that nothing would ever be the same again. It's easier to forget that day, to pretend that it didn't change the course of American history forever. It's not a day I like to think about, but I feel a responsibility to remind myself of it every September 11th. For those of us who were lucky enough to not loose anyone we love, I think the anniversary can become an abstract day of remembrance and ultimately "just another day." But for so many, it's when lost their life as they knew it- something impossible to forget because it's defined their every day since then. And it's for them that I choose to remember.