Seven Years Ago

I can't believe it has already been seven years since September 11, 2001. I'm sure that date will be considered a turning point in history books and it was definitely a turning point in my life.
I was a freshman at Columbia University and had been a resident of Manhattan for less than 3 weeks. I remember that I was getting ready for class and listening to a CD. My dorm phone rang, and it was a friend who told me that her mom had just called her and said that a plane flew into the World Trade Center. At that point in my life, I was not that aware of international politics and barely even knew who al qaeda was. It didn't matter anyway, because I pictured a small little commuter jet accidentally flying into the antennae on top of the building. It might have been the urgency in her voice that made me wander to the community TV room at the opposite end of our dorm floor. Once I saw what was going on, I was petrified. Somewhere in the shock, I remember feeling angry that I would never get to go to the top of the World Trade Center... I had just been telling my roommate the night before that we should go the next weekend. The skyline of the city I had just moved to and loved already was ruined forever. Then I looked around at all the new friends I had made, and was terrified that these attacks were like Pearl Harbor and would result in a full-scale war, sending all of my male friends to some theater of war far away.
After about 20 minutes, I returned to my dorm room to see what I should do next. This was the first time I opened my window... All I could see was thick black smoke. Columbia is in upper Manhattan, about 12 miles from Ground Zero, so I wasn't THAT close, but it sure felt close that day. For about a week, there was too much ash to breath outside. The 1/9 train (which runs through Columbia's neighborhood down to the old site of the World Trade Center) was shut down for a while. The only thing I could hear was sirens for those first days.
While pretty much everything in New York shut down and was in a standstill, Columbia still held all the classes that day. I went to my literature humanities class that morning and discussed the Iliad for two hours. I had volleyball practice that afternoon. (or at least the team tried to hold practice... a few of the older girls on the team had known recent graduates who worked in the Towers, so they couldn't function, and it turned into a crying spectacle).
It was the first time in my life that something profoundly affected me just by virtue of it happening in my lifetime. I had just moved to the city and I still felt like a visitor. I didn't know anyone personally that died that day. I was physically fine. My immediate surroundings didn't change at all. But this wave of sadness just swept over me that day and I'm not really sure when it dissipated. It comes right back every September 11th and I feel just like I did that morning. I remember talking to people from home and they all made comments about how I picked the wrong time to move to New York ... but I was so glad that I could consider myself a New Yorker that day. It was some sort of bond I had with those millions of people. And it was really amazing to see the fundamental change in every New Yorker for the period of time following September 11th... how everyone forgot their differences for a while and just supported one another to get through that horrible time.
Almost everything else seemed trivial at the time and for a while, it seemed like everyone would use the attacks to stop their petty fighting and unite together. Of course, we all know now that it soon became a political tool and created deeper divisions in the American people. Now, it's almost comical how politicians throw out "9/11" and "our homeland was attacked" to garner support and applause. I hope we never forget the people who actually lost their lives that day and all the rest of us who lost the peace and innocence of our lives that day.