What September 11 Means to Me

Yesterday was the 11th anniversary of 9/11.  It was a day that will stick in my mind forever.  I will never forget where I was or what I was doing when the terrorist act happened.  It changed how I lived my life and what I wanted out of life.  It brought me here.

The day was like any other work day.  I went to work downtown and turned on the computer.  Normally I wouldn’t check CNN but for some reason that morning I did.  The site had a picture of one of the towers with a hole in it and smoke/flames coming out.  At the time, no one knew what was going on.  Was it a small airplane that lost its way?  Was there an explosion inside the building?

I attended a training session in the IDS building and went about my day.  During class, people were checking the Internet and kept us up to date on what was occurring.  The hole in the tower was from a commercial airliner.  The second tower has been hit.  One of the towers collapsed.  At this point, the room was filled with terror…what was going on?  Could we be next?

Class was canceled and I ran back to my office.  My now ex-husband left me a message saying I needed to get out of downtown and head home.  The boss said I looked white as a ghost.  We didn’t know it at the time, but one of our co-workers was in Manhattan for training near the towers and narrowly escaped being killed by falling debris.  He saw people jumping from the towers.  The office closed and they told us to go home.

I drove in a complete daze, white-knuckled, looking overhead for planes and listening to the play-by-play on the radio.  When I arrived home, I planted myself in front of the TV and couldn’t move.  We were in complete shock.  How could something like this happen on American soil?  How could anyone be so evil?

That day going forward, I re-examined my life and decided to live every moment like it was my last.  I was in an unhappy marriage and decided to end it.  I moved out on my own and started a new career in the cosmetics field.  When I didn’t enjoy it anymore I became a flight attendant.  I remarried and had a baby.  I began running and tried improv.  I started writing a blog…which brought me to you.