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My niece’s birthday is today. If you know me personally, really know me, you know that I’m extremely emotionally sensitive, to the point of empathy.

My soul takes it personally when it sees people suffer, just as it rejoices in the joy of others. When I take a mate, I can often feel his emotions, and if I’m not careful, be led by them.

To this day, I can feel it when certain friends and family members are in distress. It’s like a magnified version of intuition.

Because of this, days like 9/11 are especially difficult for me. The sadness of the world hits me like a wave when it peaks. It’s hard to explain to people who think that September 11 is just this thing that happened. It wasn’t.

It was the rape of one of the most free times in American history.

Our generation had not truly known  war – we watched The Gulf Wars on TV, and they were over before we really came to grips with what we were watching. We were coming out of the 90s with this period of creativity surging us forward. We were headed towards a true artistic peak in spoken word, hip-hop, alternative music – the world was changing and it always starts in the arts. The challenges to the status quo were even seeping into television.

And then. This.

The following is a comment in answer to my colleague, Mark Story, who was able to articulate a bit better than me, his memory of the events of September 11, 2011.

I had an experience similar to yours. I worked at 1900 Pennsylvania Avenue at the time. I can’t explain why I called in to work that day.

I also saw it happen, on television, and wished I could un-see it. I still do. I am lucky not to have lost a loved one, but I have loved ones who did. I still remember the world before that, and feeling a sort of innocence flow out of America. The loss is like a scar that healed over a bit of shrapnel or a lodged bullet.

It’ll always ache.