five years ago...

Five years ago today, I was getting ready for work (I was a reporter at the time) and my then boyfriend was listening to Howard Stern, when Gary on the show said that a plane just hit the world trade center.

No one believed him at first, but then they started talking about the smoke they could see. My boyfriend and I turned on the news, and as we were watching, the second plane hit, but for a while, people thought the news was showing the first plane hitting again. They kept playing it over and over, until it started to seem both real and unreal at the same time. We watched the buildings come down, and I felt like I was watching a movie. Then we heard about the plane hitting the pentagon, and all I could say was we're under attack, we're under attack.

Work called, and my boyfriend (a news photographer) and I had to go in and start working on this story. I drove in, listening to the news, afraid of what else I would hear, wanting to just cry and shake. I remember thinking how odd that the weather was so perfect, when such horrifying things were happening.

One of my first assignments for 9/11 was to go to a college down the street from the paper and start talking to kids about how they felt. They were freaking out, I was freaking out. And then the paper started getting calls about people who were on the planes, because we were right outside of Boston. And I had to go and talk to these families. I had never hated my job as much as I did then. And then we started getting timelines, and I felt terrified all over again.

It was a day that changed my life, that changed our country, that shattered so many people. And today...I feel like some people have forgotten in a way, they don't remember how it felt, they don't seem to care anymore.