A little over 10 years ago, I got to go to New York City to see The Corrs live. Before the concert, some friends and I wandered the city and found ourselves at the foot of the World Trade Center. I had no idea what the buildings were, I just knew that they were an important part of the NYC skyline. We joked, and we hugged the building. We were just teenagers.
Less than a year after that day, I was home sick from school and I walked into the living room, thinking my step-dad was watching a movie. When I looked at the television, the image of smoke pouring from those towers was the first thing I saw. That image will forever be etched into my brain. Despite being 14 years old, I knew that it was an event that was going to change the country, even the world. You can ask anyone who was over the age of 5 that day where they were when those planes hit, and they can tell you every exact detail. I remember that after watching the news for almost an hour.. watching the second plane hit.. watching the towers fall and cover the city in a thick layer of ash and who knows what else.. I went to my room, and I cried. At the time, I don't know what I was crying for. I still had every single member of my family. I was safe, they were safe and we were all healthy. It was almost a year after that it sunk in that I was crying for the kids who never got to see their parents again, for the policemen and firemen who lost their lives.. for the parents who had raised their children, only to lose them. I cried until I couldn't cry anymore, and then I lay silent and let my heart hurt.
Now, on the first day of May almost ten years after that horrible day, I will always remember what I was doing when the news broke that the person responsible for 9/11 had been killed. Instead of the news, I found out from Twitter. The advances in technology have changed, but the ultimate effect of the news remained the same. Not a sense of relief, but a sense of something unknown. It is a day to celebrate and remember, but it is also a day to realize that we are not safe. Things have the chance to only get more dangerous from this point on.
Everything that has happened in the past ten years makes me fear for what is to come. I am only 23 years old, and so much has happened in this world. What more is to come?
