I Will Always Remember.

But I can’t live in that moment for the rest of my life. Every one of us walking these streets needs to see New York as it is now or as it could be soon, not as it was then. We need to look towards the future. We’re never going to live that single day again. The trouble with time is that it don’t go back, and every terror and mistake and missed opportunity will live forever. That’s how it went.

You said “I’ll see you soon” rather than “I love you.” I know. It’s all right. Maybe your last words didn’t have to be perfect. Maybe all the actions you took before spoke so much louder.

There is room in your heart for every experience. You contain multitudes. There are many mansions in your father’s home. Your TARDIS is bigger on the inside. There is no back wall on your emotional cupboard before you reach Narnia. Every one of us is so much bigger and more capable of great deeds and words and thoughts than we appear on the surface. We let them out into the world, and we keep the experiences that formed them deep within us.

And so I’ll remember everything. These memories will not inform my every move, but they’ll become a part of me. I can’t make decisions based upon the horror of that day and the time afterwards; in my weakest moments, I think of the way the city burned right outside my window and I become paralyzed. No matter how sad, how horrific, how inconceivably terrifying a day like that was, none of us can be defined by a single moment in time. We can’t live when we’re bound to a second. I’ll leave room in my heart for it. It will be there next to the way my grandfather used to laugh until he cried, alongside the smell of your perfume and all our little inside jokes, with the moment I got the call that told me I’d be leaving New York City for California. These will mix and mingle until the end of my days. And I will try to make every day better on the foundation of these memories.

This is where I tell you that you should take every moment to tell the people you care most about that you love them. Say “I love you” as much as you possibly can. One day you won’t be able to. And when you think of those people who can’t hear it anymore, remember that they probably knew. Your actions told them distinctly how much you cared. Do not allow regret to take over you. Go forward and build a life which would make them proud.