I had gone to bed after the planes had already hit. But I didn’t know. I was awake chatting with my online buddies, a few weeks before my sophomore year in college was to begin. I went to sleep around 6am and I had no idea what was happening.
An hour and a half later my mom burst into my room, jolting me awake with yelling about towers falling down, something about how it all felt like a movie, and needing to reach my cousin G (who worked at the World Financial Center next to the Twin Towers at that time).
I was confused, I wasn’t really awake, and I was a groggy mess, but I followed her down (she had run back downstairs without much more explanation beyond that) but the moment I saw the TV screen I knew I wasn’t going back to bed anytime soon. I watched as they replayed images of the towers burning against that clear blue sky, as they came crashing down, as people wandered around disoriented, shocked, covered in dust.
Somehow, miraculously, we reached my cousin G on his cell phone (I still don’t know how this happened). He told us he’d seen the second plane hit, he was right about to enter his office building when he looked up into the sky and watched as it flew into the second tower. He had stood there in horror, he told me, “And then people were jumping out of the building. They all died.” and the WAY he said it will stay with me forever. It was like this complete shock, I wrote at the time that the way he said it felt like he was saying it out loud to confirm that this was all real. He was one of those covered in dust from the building after they collapsed, he was one of those who had run and by the time he stopped running he was at 20th street and figured he could just walk the remaining 50 blocks home.
Speaking with him in the midst of all that, it made it all the more real to me. I was terrified, I felt sick (probably also due to lack of sleep), and I was angry.
I was also really irritated by some of the obnoxious, inevitable, illogical racist reaction that seemed to be going on around the web. But my worldview did change forever that day. For better or for worse, it was the day that opened up my eyes to exactly what kind of world we live in and the need and importance of fighting to preserve a way of life we take for granted.   I was no longer as innocent as I had been.