I went to Stuyvesant high school, and graduated in 2000. Stuy was a few blocks from the trade center, and I had friends who were still in high school that day. I knew people who saw the first plane fly in.

Was a bad day. There was a part of me that felt a weird guilt for not being there. Like, as a lifelong New Yorker, the trauma was part of my birthright somehow, and being away for school made me feel strangely removed when I felt like I should be feeling it in my bones.

My mother had PTSD for a good while afterward, and she lived way uptown from the trade center.

Was a bad day.