Everyone knows not to call me that early in the morning, so I knew it was bad.

"Turn on your tv." It was my Dad.

"Why?"

"A plane just flew into the World Trade Center."

I didn't even respond. I just dropped my phone and turned on my television. What I saw on that day, and on the days after, changed the way I saw the world, and the people in it. It also took away the safety that I felt in my own home.

As an American, I was spoiled by the sense of security I had living in this country. And why shouldn't we be spoiled with safety and security? The United States is the richest, most powerful nation in the world, right? We should have no reason to be afraid that any outsiders could disrupt that feeling inside of our own borders. I could never imagine it possible.

I can't begin to accurately describe the range of emotions that day brought. Terror. Fear. Disgust. Anger. Fury. Distrust. Shame. Hurt. Rage. Hate. Confusion. Ignorance. And about a million more.

Mostly, I felt let down by the U.S. government, who take billions of our tax dollars spending it on security, to ensure that these sort of things don't happen.

Around the end of 2000, a guy in our office was talking to me. He was hired by MyCompany's owner to do security, background checks, and debt recovery. He has a very extensive and somewhat secretive history of work with the government. He has never told the whole story, but I've listened to enough bits and pieces to put together that he knows a lot of people, and a lot of information that regular people don't. And probably don't want to know.

We were talking about Saddam Hussein, and he was telling me that Saddam was small change in comparison to the real terrorists. The guys who hide in the shadows, and have more money at their disposal than any of us would ever know what to do with. Guys who don't live outrageously opulant lifestyles like Hussein did, becuase their focus was not on possessions, or ostentaciousness, but on bringing down the U.S. By any means necessary.

He was talking to me about the first bombing of the World Trade Center, in the early 90's. I said that I was sure nothing like that would ever happen here again, because we (our government) wouldn't allow it a second time. He took me in his office, closed the door, and opened a locked drawer in his filing cabinet. He pulled out a book that had no writing on the cover, just a government logo and "2000" underneath. The book contained the ten most dangerous known terrorists in the world.

I looked through the book, which detailed their families, their money, their locations, and all of the attacks that they were known to be involved in. The name Osama bin Laden meant nothing to me at that time, but he specifically pointed he and another man (whose name I don't recall) out and said that those two men were going to do something much worse than the original WTC bombing in America, and that I shouldn't be so arrogant to think it couldn't happen.

He also told me that I shouldn't put my safety in the hands of George W. Bush and his administration. He told me that he didn't want to scare me (because it fucking DID), but that I was a big girl, and I needed to know that bad things could and would happen here.

And they did.

Driving to work that morning, every other driver had the same empty, desperate look on their face. The same look of hopelessness and dispair. I was listening to Howard Stern, listening to his reaction to it, just a few miles away, as it happened, and people calling in about family members who worked in the area who were missing. It was the most horrible sinking feeling I think I'd ever felt.

When I got into work, everyone was huddled around the tv in the HR manager's office, paralyzed. Unable to move, or even speak. I went to my desk, and turned my radio on, and there was a post-it on my computer monitor that just said "I hate to say I told you so..." I don't think I even talked to anyone that day, now that I think about it. We had the option of going home if we really wanted to, but I knew if I sat in my apartment all day watching coverage of people dying, and running for their lives, I would go crazy.

One of my other co-workers didn't come to work that day. He didn't come to work the next day, either. When he did come back, he told us that his brother (who I'd met a few times, and was an awesome person) worked on the 53rd (I think) floor of the WTC and that he was missing.

Four years later, he's still missing. His body was never recovered, and his mother, who is almost 80 years old, refuses to give up hope that her son is still alive, and that he is just lost somewhere, wandering around trying to find his way home. Whatever gets you through the day, I guess.

I still feel just as shitty today as I did four years ago. I feel just as afraid, and just as angry. Only now, I am much more angry at the people who run THIS country than I am at anyone else. I am angry that GW and his jesus-loving zealots of an administration were too busy worrying about how to take down the porn industry when they should have been paying attention to the CIA trying to tell him we were about to be attacked. Angry that they lied in front of the whole world so that we could send our nation's sons and daughters off to fight in a war we'll never win, so that all his friends could profit on re-building a nation that doesn't seem to want to be civilized. Angry that four years later, Osama bin Laden doesn't seem to be a priority, even though 3000 Americans lost their lives on September 11 because of him.

Angry that in spite of all of that, this country (yeah, I'm looking at you, red states) let me down and re-elected him.

And that, I just don't fucking understand.