I've mentioned this before in other threads but I was 16 at the time and had literally just started college. Had finished for the day at lunchtime and went with my then boyfriend to his piano lesson, and was sitting inside the waiting room reading about Joanne Lees of all things.
My mum called me on my mobile, which was incredibly rare because calls from landlines to mobiles were expensive. She'd just got home from work and said 'turn on the news, there has been a plane crash into the world trade centre' - I'm a bit ashamed to admit I had no idea what they were, and was a bit nonchalant on the call because I figured it was an accident. Mum was saying 'no no it's really bad, it's a terrorist attack' and then I sort of took stock. I had to wait another ten minutes until my boyfriend finished and then I told him and the teacher, and he switched on the radio to just blanket coverage of what had happened. Eventually we left and walked to the bus stop and everything was so eerie - people were crying, it almost felt like a ghost town.
Back then there were a score of electrical shops by the bus stop and as coverage was on every single channel each tv just had repeats of the plane crashing into the south tower, and we saw the north tower collapse whilst we were watching. A lady waiting was beside herself and kept talking about war and how world war 3 was going to start and I started crying myself.
We got home eventually and just sat dumbfounded watching the tv all night. We watched President Bush address the nation somewhere in the middle of the night/morning and eventually fell asleep around 4am. Normally my boyfriends parents would insist we slept separately but that night they just didn't care; we had his little sister in bed with us as well which sounds really odd in retrospect but she was so upset and kept asking questions.
We went to college the next day and all anyone was talking about was what happened, classes were still on but we didn't do any material, the lecturers just talked us through our feelings and anxieties. I was a naive middle class teenager and had absolutely no idea about the geopolitics behind it whatsoever, and the teachers didn't force the information but just answered questions. I remember going to a pub afterwards and reading a paper about it all, and just being consumed by the thought we would be engaging in war before long.
Me and the boyfriend split up about 10 months later but every 9/11 we send each other a message (we talk apart from this!) just thanking each other for being there on that day - we were both really scared, village kids thrown into this world we never knew and we did a lot of talking in the days afterwards.
My thoughts, as ever, to those affected by the atrocities.