Another 9/11 anniversary, another year of being punked.

I've never published anything about 9/11 before. Even as I write this, I feel disgusting even attempting to describe the enormity of it. I am from Brooklyn, NY. My parents were both born and spent almost all of their lives in NYC. At the time the towers fell, I was a homeless high school student staying with a New Yorker friend. She was already awake, doing her hair and makeup when she rushed into the room.

"Some asshole flew his Cessna into the World Trade Center" she said as she flicked on the television. I had been sleeping in, wallowing in self pity and nursing a heart broken by my parents. My friend was in the bathroom, listening to Howard Stern. I was sitting on the edge of the bed, watching the footage on CNN and hoping the fire was as contained as they hinted it was.

Then, the second plane hit.

I shiver even now, only affected by the echos of memories from nearly a decade ago. Appeals to God could be heard in the newsroom on the television, but I didn't notice. The two of us screamed and cried, rushing from room to room, every television in the house showing different news channels. I called my mother, who was frantically trying to contact my brother, family friends, relatives, everyone and anyone we cared for. Those buildings were a hub for activity, and anyone in New York who we loved we could see having business in that complex. We didn't learn they were all okay until two days later. In one case, it was only being stuck in traffic that spared one of them from being injured, if not worse.

I prayed anxiously and eagerly, attempting to bargain on behalf of those people with a God I wasn't sure existed. The towers fell, and my childhood died. I hated myself for being so far away from the city I loved, helpless and lost in a state that would never understand. During my first class, I nearly got into a fist fight with a kid who said "Its just New York, it doesn't matter." Later, my math teacher shut off the television and said "The most important thing is that we learn math, so we can be better prepared to be competitive in the world. I'm not going to change my class schedule for something that happened on the other side of the country." I never returned to that class.

The attack on the pentagon, the hijacked plane brought down by the passengers in Pennsylvania, the anthrax attacks, it was all so much. Reports from my brother of people cheering in the streets of New York as the towers burned (not just in distant Pakistan), Muslims being dragged from their homes and executed in the streets, and then being told to go shopping by the President. Knowing that not only were these hijackers granted entry into our country, but they were trained to fly in the very state I lived it. To hear their extensions for legal habitation in our country were delivered to their residences weeks after they had killed thousands of our citizens infuriated me. It was surreal, but not as surreal as where we are now.

The simple fact is, the current administration let the people who did this to get away with it. We got sucker punched, and let them walk away. The politicians used our pain and anguish to wage a war they had already been planning before the attack. We were manipulated, and I went along with it during the next election, always hoping they would straighten things out. Faith in general, especially faith in other people, has never been my strong suit, but I tried. I didn't want to let down those firefighters who went rushing into those burning buildings to save others. I wanted to believe Bush would come through for us, for the sake of those who I was unable to help.

After Giuliani's run for President, where everything he said was "a noun, verb and 9/11", the RNC's graphic "tribute" video, and the polls that show people actually bought this bullshit causes me to consider leaving the country I love.

Over and over again, my brothers and I talk about how if given a time machine, we would book a ticket on one of those flights and murder those hijackers. Without regret, without remorse, without hesitation. But I wonder, how many others would do the same?