I Can’t Remember The Day The Twin Towers Fell
By Rachel Custer
My friends and family act as my memory during this time; the historians who try to help me piece together what my life was like then.
Content warning: suicidal ideation
I t’s 2006, maybe. I’m 25. The gas station clerk is gabbing with a state cop about the heroics of first responders. All I want is my coffee. She tells me, in the hushed reverence reserved for church: “I’ll never forget where I was when the towers fell.” The man with greasy hair has finished filling the tank on his moped and echoes the sentiment. While I pay, they lose themselves in remembrance.
They don’t notice when I leave.
Admission: I remember and feel very little about the events of 9/11.
Before you gasp, before you throw your rocks, know that this isn’t about any lack of sympathy for those affected by that terrible day. It’s about where I was, and who I was, then.
Allow me to explain.
Of course I’ve seen the towers fall. Who hasn’t? Every year, there are the airplanes, and still photos of the man cartwheeling toward the street so far below, and the conflagration in the window from which he jumped. There are…
