Carolina Butler's

It was September 2001. I was 18 years old and had just started my first semester at the College of Charleston. I was on my own in a new city, three hours from home. I had graduated high school just a few months before and had met the people I now lived with just a few weeks before. Classes had begun and I was getting into the swing of things. All of us were listening to Pink, Christina Augilera, Linkin Park, & Staind. We had all been shocked when one of the most famous pop & R &B stars of our era, Aaliyah, had been killed in a plane crash that August. That rocked our world. Unfortunately, we hadn't seen anything yet.

I remember where I was that morning - at the deli at the bottom of my dorm buying breakfast. I saw chaos showing live on CNN playing on the TV there and ran back up to my suite to ask anyone if they knew what was going on. We all sat in silence as we watched the second plane hit on TV.

All of us knew something signifcant was going on, but none of us had any idea how it would shape everything we knew about the world - politics, religion, our own mortality. We saw one of the girls on our floor, a New Yorker, hysterical because she knew many of her friends' parents worked in the World Trade Center Towers. I didn't know that girl well, but I will never forget her.

I knew we were probably safe in Charleston, despite the large Naval base close by and the close proximity of Parris Island. But I was watching my country dissipate into a hysterical mass and my parents weren't there. My mom wasn't even in the country at that time. It was scary for someone so far from the tragedy and I will always remember that day and the helpless feeling in the pit of my stomach.

I can't believe it's been 10 years. So much has happened, but the memory of that day will always be present and I truly believe that it was a day that blatant disrespect and hatred for humanity was overcome by incredible sacrifices and goodness. It seemed like that day the USA turned their faces towards God and begged for mercy. And in so many ways, mercy was granted - in the survivors brought out of the rubble, in the heroic stories of passengers who sacrificed their own lives to make sure the plane didn't hit the target it was headed for. In so many amazing tales of survival and friendship. I think a lot of us have forgotten how we felt toward each other that day - that we were all in this together.

We're still all in this together. Never forget.