Lost Opportunities: Birthdays, Memories and Towers

My 7th birthday... I remember it quite clearly, despite the fact it was fourteen years ago (my age isn't what my DA page says it is).

I remember the days before, a little bit. Telling my mum what I wanted my cake to look like, the anticipation, the autumn leaves that were falling.

Come September 6th, 2001, and my 7th birthday went off without a hitch. Cutting the cake and eating it, opening the presents in the conservatory. I remember the atmosphere most of all, however. It felt... different, perhaps because it was Autumn.

Five days later, the world changed. Those days, are blank to me. Nothing significant happened on that day that allowed to remember them... at least, nothing significant happened to me.

I remember the early days of the war in Afghanistan. I remember seeing it on the news at my dad's house, and just wanting the channel to change to Cartoon Network. The only thing I really thought about Afghanistan, apart from "Gahhh, I don't want to watch this!", was Why we were there, fighting in this country I had never heard of before.

I didn't become truly aware of the reason until years later.

More and more, I dwell on the September 11th attacks. I have doubted the official story, and believed it. I have mourned for the people I never knew.

I guess its strange that I weep for the Towers more. I see pictures of them and wish I could go there, see them, go inside them, up to the top of them... and it hurts that I can't. That hurts me more, that I will NEVER see the Twin Towers. And not just any old twin towers, THE Twin Towers.

I'd need a time machine, or a way to get into a parallel universe to see them. But I know the chances of that, are basically zero.

I will never see the Twin Towers. And I'd give anything to do just that.