September 11, 2001: My Memories of The Day the World Ended

I fell asleep on the night of September 10, 2001 as I had done every day for 7 years prior...Little did I know, the world I fell asleep in on the night of September 10 would not be the world I awoke to on September 11...

For many years I thought I had seen the events of 9/11 unfold live but seeing as I was in Nevada at the time of the event, there really wasn't any way I could have since the first plane hit at around 5:46 AM where I lived and the second at about 6:03 AM. I wouldn't have even been awake until about an hour later.

Regardless my memories of the day were quite vivid, I can recall going about my day quite normally until around 8 or 9 AM when I happened to walk by the living room TV where my grandmother, may she rest in peace, who was painfully addicted to Fox News was of course watching Fox News and the replays of the events were endless. I saw the footage of the planes hitting the towers, the towers collapsing, and endless talking.

I was only 7 years old, so what the newscasters were saying didn't make a lot of sense to me, and the full weight of what I was witnessing wasn't clear to me at the time, but even then, the moment I saw that footage, even I, a small child could feel how the world ended. It was like a silence had fallen over the world. Sure, people were talking, newscasters were talking, things were happening but despite that everything felt quiet, silenced.

It's a sensation I remember so deeply anytime I see old footage of the events or recall it in my mind. That overwhelming sense of silence, like everything had simply stopped, ceased.

And it didn't stop on September 12...It didn't stop on September 13...Honestly, I can't recall when it finally stopped, even my kids networks like Nickelodeon that I frequently watched at the time were airing things to talk about the tragedy that had unfolded before our eyes.

 It was surreal, and it was probably the first time in my life I had felt anything "Surreal" I remember not really understanding why everything felt so quiet, why things were so...Wrong, yet everything seemed normal? It's only now, 24 years later, that I finally understand why it felt so off.

It is because the world ended. At 8:46 AM, Eastern Standard Time on September 11, 2001, the world ended, do not think otherwise. The world we live in today is in no way shape or form the world we lived in before that time and date.

 

To this day I ponder if the world nowadays feels wrong because we weren't supposed to survive past 2001, like if we had prevented 9/11 we were supposed to continue on but allowing it to happen was supposed to end us, yet somehow we defied that fate...And now we live in this hellscape of a timeline...We may never know.

All I really know...Is that I, at 7 years old, watched the world end...And now, 24 years later...I want that world back...

 Never Forget what they took from you.