about a day.

Disclaimer: I wrote this yesterday and put it on Facebook because of its deeply personal nature. However, after some consideration I decided to post this here. 9/11 helped shape my political beliefs, and I want my readers to understand where I am coming from. I'm sorry that everything is in lowercase and that there are no apostrophes or anything, but this is how my thoughts run. Also it's a bit of creative writing so give me some artistic license here. Anyway enjoy.

i remember 9/11.

i could see it from my house and from my school. i was in the sixth grade, twelve. i was late that day and thought the dark clouds behind me were storm clouds. naive to think clouds that dark and black could form so quickly on such a clear blue day.

from september to december the ashes bled out into the sky until i could no longer remember what my skyline looked like before august.

a woman gave me a rosary one day after class. i once read that nuns measure distances by rosary prayers, and so i began to do the same. it took two our fathers and three hail mary's to get to school every day. i went to church every weekend, was mildly involved in the youth group. things at home got worse. i left at fifteen--my faith and i parted ways. today i measure distance by cigarettes--it takes three and a half cigarettes to get from the bus stop to my apartment.

my mother, a flight attendent, was home constantly. she drank. blamed everyone for 9/11, blamed me when she was especially bad. because flights had nearly halted, she was always home, and i had no where to hide. she complained about the constant news coverage. i had nightmares about her falling out of the sky. about newark airport being bombed. it couldve been her that day, i reminded her. 'thats what you want, isnt it? you want me gone', was all she said in return. i always said nothing.

in 2002 i became a full US citizen. i never felt like an american. i never will.

i remember the invasion of iraq in 2003 and watching the first air strikes. i was thirteen. i felt like i could not stop watching. i was paralyzed with fear. 'my mother said movies that people didnt watch were called bombs,' said my mother. she put her hand on my shoulder. i cried.

at the college i eventually flunked out of, i went to every protest imaginable. in 2010 i went to an anti muslim protest against my better judgment, to fuck with the racists. i had a vuvuzela. the cops watched as people threatened and screamed at me, becoming increasingly physically violent, ripping my friend's headscarf off her head, telling me to go back to my country (this from a cuban man with an impossibly thick accent that reminded me of my mother's). i cried. but only after i stood up to a man several times larger than me.

i dont like 9/11. i dont like the stupid moralism, the endless hate speech, the comparisons to the holocaust and slavery from both sides of the political spectrum. 9/11 was a geopolitical event comparable to the fall of the berlin wall, the kind of event historians call 'the end of history', and in a sense, it was. it reminded us that the world was not static, that there is no such thing as good and evil--that the invasions of afghanistan and iraq were framed as 'just and good' will never escape my memory for as long as i live.

happy 9/11.