I Was Only Four.

When the two planes crashed into those towers, when the one plane crashed into the Pentagon...
When the heroes on flight 93 decided it was better to crash their own plane into a field in Pennsylvania, rather than to let the terrorists crash it wherever they were planning to...
I was only four.

I was in the car with my mother, and with Veela, on the way to my mother's doctor appointment. (She was four months pregnant with my sister Christina.)

I don't remember a thing.

All I remember is growing up with this fear of the date "9-11", with knowing that something bad happened then.

And honestly, the only way I really knew about it at all, or remembered, was because 9-11 is what you call when you have an emergency.

I'm thankful for that number.

Even though I don't remember the people who died that day, or even that day at all, I'm glad that I grew up with knowing that something bad had happened.

Something horrible and tragic.

Ten years later, and I'm 14.

I'm not going to lie and say that I'm patriotic and that I start crying when I say the Pledge of Allegiance. I don't get overly hyped up on Fourth of July, or on any of the countless days that we celebrate (or simply remember, on the case of 9-11)...
But I love my country.

And today, I almost started crying for those people.

Imagine.

Before that day, it hadn't happened.

Kids got up. Got dressed. Brushed their teeth.
They went to school.

Adults got up. They went to work. Maybe they died in the towers, or maybe they just got scared as they stood in a McDonald's and listened to the radio.

Either way.
Imagine waking up.
Imagine answering someone "what day is it?"
And not having that drop of the stomach when you realize what day it is.

That's the most horrible part for me. It's the fact that all those people, over 3,000, got up that morning with the full expectation that they were going to live through it.

It's that those firefighters went into the building knowing they were going to die.

And all those people who fought with them. Maybe someone had a teen, and they had ended badly. Maybe someone was worried they were going to get fired, or maybe they had just had bad news themselves.
A car crash.
Cancer.

But after that, it didn't matter anyway.

Sorry for the rambling post. It's kind of pointless, but I just wanted to do something for 9-11. I don't remember, but I remember.
I didn't ever know, but I can't forget, either.
I wasn't ever hating those people who did it, but I have to forgive them.

I pledge allegiance to the flag
Of the United States of America.
And to the republic,
For which it stands,
One nation,
Under God,
Indivisible,
With liberty and justice for all.