9/11.

Eight years ago, I lived in Long Island, New York. My parents and I went about our usual schedule, them to work, me to school.

Around two o’clock, almost every kid, including me, was pulled out of class to go home. The twin towers had just been hit by a plane.

By the time I got home, riding in the car with a silent and aggravated father, the second plane hadn’t crashed.

It was when my dad called my mom that it did.

My dad sat in front of the tv watching the live footage for about half an hour without saying a word to me. I eventually left, not knowing at all what exactly had happened.

When my mom got home, I asked her what went down and she stated the obvious. They sat me down and told me straight forward that those people had died because some country didn’t like our country.

I cried.

At the the age of seven, I got my first taste of loss and death and how the aftermath left a gray haze over the entire the country.

We were only 45 minutes away when the Twin Towers fell to the ground.

Even from that far away, I could smell smoke in the air. I could see the rubble floating around. I felt the earth tremor, not from the crash but from the shaken people that surrounded the site.

I cry whenever I tell somebody about this and honestly I’m crying right now.

May those who lost their lives in the 9/11 crash rest in peace. I hope their families found closure. And to the men that did this, I hope they burned in hell for what they did to so many innocent people. The innocent ones being not only the people in the building but the little girls and boys that lost their fathers and mothers and grandparents and aunts and uncles in that crash.

9/11.

America forever.