I watched the mighty skyline fall...

OK, so I know I have to write about Project Runway, and I have All Times to get done.

But even I, the queen of frivolous distraction, can't bring myself to write about those things today.

I was thirteen on September 11, 2001. I remember snippets of the day itself, not much. I remember talking with my friend Christine and I railed against whichever Williams sister won the US Open that year. We talked about the death of R&B singer Aaliyah, which we thought was tragic.

Our teachers didn't tell us. Well, I knew, sort of. I knew something had happened, but I didn't know the extent. We noticed our friend Michael, who's dad worked at the Port Authority had been pulled. We didn't think too much on it. I remember the words, "How stupid do you have to be to fly a plane into a building?" were spoken.

I went to cheerleading practice. We talked about it there. And tallked and talked. We were terrified. One of my mother's best friends is an American Airlines flight attendant. I was terrified for her. Three fighter jets flew over our town. We were a bunch of thirteen year old girls sitting in the middle of an open field. What do you think happened?

Two minutes later my mom was in the parking lot, three minutes later she was holding me and we were crying together. I asked about Maureen. She was safe and home with her kids. I asked about my cousins who lived in the city. Everyone was safe, Mike's father, safe, safe, safe, safe.

We watched the news for days. Day after day, after day. After a while life went on. It still does. Things were the same, but everything was different.

I have trouble confronting that day. It scares me because I was still a little girl, or I'd just become a young woman, or was on my way and the slow transition was ripped from me, just like it was from everyone my age.

I have notes for a novel I want to write one day, about the adolescence of people born between 1986 and 1989, starting on September 11, 2001 and ending on November 4, 2008. I can't start writing it. I've tried, and I'll keep trying. People don't hear how different it was for us. I want to be the one to say it.