6 months

Well, it's been 6 months today; one half-year since the terrorist attacks of September 11. It seems both farther away and closer than it is. I remember waking up that morning to the phone ringing. The phone sits upstairs in my house and I sleep downstairs, but I can always hear it. I knew it was for me, like I usually know when it is, so I was out of bed and heading up the stairs in my robe before my mom even called me to take the phone.

It was Colin, naturally. It seems like everything extreme in my life happens with Colin in or around the thick of things, and I wouldn't have it any other way. I don't remember exactly what was said, but I know I got the quick recap of the morning's events - plane - trade towers - two - maybe terrorists - CNN - and I couldn't believe it. Rather, I could believe it... but it was no less shocking. So I turned on the TV and watched the planes hit the towers, watched it over and over again as it looped beneath the stupified chatter of news anchors who had nothing to say and probably just wanted to slink away and throw up. Like I did.

I went to school that day, and there were TVs lining the hallways surrounded by clusters of rapt students and staff members. So many people were standing there, and I felt more alone than I almost ever had. Sharing a building with 10,000 people, I was at least an hour away from anyone I knew. There was no one around who'd be even slightly interested in hearing me cry and scream, and that was all I really felt inclined to do. There were classes that day, education marching on, but I don't really remember much of it. I went home and then went promptly back out - this time with Colin and the gang to BPs for the comfort of both food and friendship.

It felt like something was going to change that day. I was angry and vengeful and scared , and I'm a Canadian. I thought that just across the border there must be 250 million people who felt the same way I did, and their combined ire would burst forth and scrub the world clean of whoever had done this terrible thing and anyone would would endorse or condone their acts of hate. It seemed the likely event - the comparisons to Pearl harbour were obvious and immediate, and we all know what price the Japanese paid. Some friends, perhaps more level-headed and realistic than I, said that the world hadn't changed, it's horrors had just been thrown into harsher relief. I thought that might somehow be good enough.

But nothing has changed. Not really. Some soldiers have done some soldierly things, and God bless them for it. More people have died, including good guys. But there hasn't been any real result. A corrupt and oppresive government got spanked, but there are no terrorist bigwigs rotting in American jails. No world-wide stop, or even slow-down, of bombings and shootings and hating. It just the same old world. But with a million more novelty pins, a million more minutes of news footage, a million more empty words, of which these preceeding thousand are not exempt.