jesus christ. i feel like a complete and total ass. yes i've had my "my life sucks" moments. actually, i've been having those moments more and more recently. but what happened today just puts everything into the correct perspective. i was frightened just watching the news, but god...can you imagine how much more frightened those people trapped in the world trade center buildings and the pentagon and the hijacked airplanes must've been?

so mom woke me up around 140 pm today and told me that the pentagon and the new york stock exchange had been hit by terrorists. (yeah, she was a little confused. as everyone knows, it was actually the world trade centers.) i was incredibly groggy and didn't understand what the heck she was saying. she repeated herself several times and then i finally understood that the pentagon had been hit and the only thing i was thinking was, "the pentagon?!? holy fuck." the pentagon is like the fucking nerve center of american military. to hit the pentagon is just...i don't know. it's incredibly frightening to think that terrorists were actually able to hit the pentagon. because if they were able to hit the pentagon, who knows what else they're capable of.

anyway, mom went on to tell me that my oldest cousin was on a flight from pennsylvania to san francisco this morning and that the plane had landed in utah and she was stranded there. i still hadn't heard that what the world trade center buildings and the pentagon had been hit with were actual airplanes that were hijacked. so i was just like "okay...that's nice." when i started watching the news, and i finally heard everything that had happened, not only was i getting more frightened, but i was just relieved and grateful that she was okay. better to be stranded in utah than in new york at the moment.

god...watching the replays of the second plane colliding with one of the twin towers and the towers eventually collapsing is just horrifying. to think of how many people were in those buildings and planes...my god...and it's scary how many people are starting to refer to this day as this generation's pearl harbor. because we all know what happened after pearl harbor. everything's closing...schools, malls, bridges, office buildings, government buildings, airports, train stations, us borders, even disneyland. watching this on the news is like watching a bad movie...one of the scariest sights was watching the hundreds of people running and screaming on the streets of new york. i just kept thinking, ohmygod...this is real. this isn't a movie. this is actually happening.

just read jo's blog. she described seeing this one scene that she would remember forever. i hadn't seen the particular one that she wrote about. but that made me think of the one scene i saw on the news that would be burned into my memory. i was watching dan rather summarize everything that had happened on cbs for the evening news. he explained how the planes had hit the world trade centers and the pentagon and was going through the timeline. at one point, he said "reason gave way to desperation" and they showed a video of a man falling from one the top stories of one of the burning twin towers. i couldn't even think. i don't even know what to say. just...mygod...he must have been so scared. i know that's a really stupid thing to say...but i can't even imagine how scared he must have been...how desperate and panicked he was.

well...whoever did this...jesus christ, did they make a HUGE mistake.