The air felt different all day today.

Or maybe it’s just that I couldn’t ever manage to quite draw a proper breath. I just never can, not on this day, not for twenty-three years and counting.

I long for the day when terrorism will be unequivocally condemned, rather than conditionally so based on who’s being terrorized.

I recall personally opposing the war in Iraq twenty-ish years ago, but I also recall the world’s general agreement that the U.S. was absolutely right to avenge in some way the atrocity that had been committed against her. In the end, I recall there were a lot shrugs of shoulders about the validity of how she chose to go about it.

Blind eyes are interesting, aren’t they? How selective they can be regarding the direction in which they choose to turn.

I’ve written before about how difficult it is to teach about 9/11 to young children. In the aftermath now of a much more current example of the same kind of tragedy in the world within the last year, I am starting to worry much more about whether it’s been properly taught at all to young adults. Today’s college students weren’t alive when airplanes were hijacked by terrorists and deliberately crashed into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and very nearly the White House. They don’t know. Maybe they’ll say they heard about it, learned about it in school, read it in their history textbooks. But they don’t know. They. Don’t. Know.

I wonder what the world today would be like if they did know. And if that sounds to anyone like I’m wishing for it to happen again — first of all, fuck anyone who thinks for even a second that I would wish that at all for any living being on this planet, and second of all, I don’t have to wish that anyway, because it already did, last October, in Israel. I don’t wish for 9/11; those who do (and there are those who do, in this world) are monsters.

What I wish is for eyes to be open, really truly open. No. Not eyes. Hearts. I wish for hearts to be open. Maybe someday, love will win over hate.

I wish for my lungs to be more open too, on this day. Maybe someday on a September 11th, I’ll be able to properly breathe.

Maybe someday, I’ll be able to fully explain how it is that I left my breath behind me twenty-three years ago and on this day I’m reminded that I’ll never really get it back. And maybe someday, there will be people who will listen.