this is just how i feel

so i know you are going to inundated with 9/11 images and memories and all that but i am going to do this anyway.
i can so vividly remember that day. it was less than one month into my freshman year in college. i lived with melissa lajoie, tiffany stewart, and lindsay bowen on 3rd douglas (yes that year it was a female floor).
i guess i dont want to remember that day so much but i want to remember that feeling. because it is such a scary feeling to have... and then if we forget how we felt what did it mean in the first place. i know that we can't live in fear or in the past or any of those cliches. but i know that i hate that i can feel something so much and then not remember how important that was.... and there are times when we feel the drama of day to day event and we feel that is the most important thing and then two weeks down the road (sometimes longer) we look back and realize how silly that was but i am talking about real.... hard, painful, loving feelings. have you ever hurt somebody and then felt horrible about it and then later can't remember that pain that you felt for hurting someone. i dont want to forget those feelings.
on 9/11 i remember being a part of something larger than coe, than ottawa, than my japanese lit class... there was a greater connection to americans to families of those who passed away- i felt their pain (or as much as i could) as they searched through ash for some sign of their loved ones. i know that i dont know that pain, but i want to remember what i felt. remember how i cried for a pregnant woman who lost her husband. what i felt when i saw the second plan go into the towers... remember the feeling of being at polk elementary and trying to reassure the children things were okay and only being 18 and not knowing what okay meant or how to tell a 5 year-old kid what had happened. and well i am remembering for me moreso than you or them because if i dont remember then all those tears and moments of uncertainty is lost because i didn't gain a thing from it... that sounds really selfish but like i said... this is just how i feel.