On September 11, 2001 I was in D.C. working six blocks from the White House. That morning, downtown was like something out of the movies. The part where right before a huge catastrophe is about to hit and everyone is panicking and trying to evacuate en masse. I had been late getting to work that morning and everything happened during my morning commute on the train, so there was no way to get to the internet or TV and cell phones weren't working. The only thing I knew was from what the people around me were saying and they were saying that we were being attacked - in New York and Washington, the city where I was. And no one knew what was coming next. It was terrifying.
And then, in the days after, it was heartbreaking. I would read through the paper every morning, scanning to see if there was anyone on the list of casualties I knew. There was. A high school friend in the World Trade Center, the brother of an in-law on Flight 93 - so many obituaries day after day. So much grief.
When I finally was able to get home that day, very late in the afternoon, I wrote this in my journal:
"I can't begin to explain the feeling of getting off the metro today, four blocks from the White House, and seeing a mass exodus fleeing DC. It seriously crossed my mind that I was going to be killed, along with the rest of the city, in some giant fireball that would level everything like in 'Independence Day'. Sirens were wailing, rumors were flying, people were teary eyed and terrified, I heard jets, and I couldn't get cell phone service to call someone to tell them I was okay and on my way back home."
I remember almost every detail of that day. I remember what I was wearing. I remember what the weather felt like. And I will always, always remember that fear. I still feel it when I think about where I was that morning.
But my story is nothing compared to the stories of the thousands and thousands of people who lost family, or friends, or their own lives that day. The people who helped save lives, but whose own lives have been irreversibly damaged from inhaling dust at Ground Zero. The people who went to war, fighting back, who will never come home. Today, I'm thinking of them.
There was a school a couple of blocks away from my office in DC. Shortly after the tragedy, they shared this mural and a bunch of art from the kids on the outside walls and fences.
We will never forget. Of course, we won't. How could we ever?
Katy - I had forgotten you were in DC when 9/11 happened and how worried you Mom and Dad were - we tend to stay frozen on our own emotions and experiences when tragedy occurs. I lost 2 friends tht day, one a fire fighter and another at the Trade Towers, and a year later I visited and was devestated again by the enormity of it all as the clean-up was still going on. 9/11 re-defined my life and I take nothing for granted anymore I just wish I could have come to this new outlook without so much loss.
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