Eight years past

About this time eight years ago, I was sitting in my bedroom after having pulled an all-nighter at the Creative Circus in Atlanta. I was due back to the Circus 30 minutes earlier to work my shift in the library, but I couldn't get up from the foot of my bed.
The flicker of the TV, the numbness in my extremities, the clammy palms, the meatball-like lump in my throat, the tears pooling in the corner of my eyes, the hatred in my core beginning to fester – it all had me cemented to my bed as I watched two scarred buildings smoke like chimneys.
What was this? Why was this? Who was this?
Was I lucky that I didn't personally know anyone in those buildings or on those planes? No. Luck had nothing to do with it. Because at that moment, everyone was family. Everyone, a friend. And we all grieved as such.
Afterwards, we stood together. An entire nation brought closer. An entire nation that felt more like a small community. A community of 278,000,000 neighbors.
I think about this day eight years past. And how on some days we forget we were attacked because of our way of life. Because of our foundation as a country. Because of our freedoms. I will never forget what happened, for my life had changed – all our lives had changed.