For a few years I didn't understand the gravity of it. I was a snarky, late-blooming teen and thought all the hand-wringing and weeping, while understandable at first, was beyond dramatic and hyperbolic as the weeks and months wore on.
Being in Texas, and I know we had fast enough internet and Nokia cell phones, but the world still felt big enough to where NYC (a city I had never been to, at that point in my life) might as well have been Canada for all I knew or cared.
Of course with time and maturity, I've come to understand things with an adult brain and I get it. I really do. But all I remember vividly is waking up sometime in the afternoon with a horrible hangover from being hazed the nigh before, having skipped all my classes.
And maybe because of how I first conceptualized and synthesized that day and have had to try to feel it in the right way retroactively, I've still struggled with being as emotionally invested or moved as others and so I enjoy reading ya'lls stories.