Last night, I started a post on the lessons a running injury has taught me, and as I woke up on 9/11, it felt too self-indulgent to me, so it will be posting next week.
How is it fourteen years ago that our world changed?
I was a freshman in college in D.C. I’d just left home a few weeks ago and was navigating this living on my own thing when everything we knew changed. The 250 miles that stood between me and my family and the familiar never felt so far (and thankfully would never feel that far again.) I had just been in the city a week before I left for school. I had lunch with my cousin in a restaurant on one of the lower levels of the World Trade Center.
The city I lived in was attacked, and the city I grew up outside of was attacked. What was safe? At the time, we had no idea. There was a bomb threat at my school two days later, and I sought refuge with a girl who had gone to my high school and went to American and lived off-campus. We didn’t know each other before, but it was the closest to familiar I had at the time. We would later find out that several of our classmates had lost their fathers in the attacks.
Seven years later, I would leave that city and move to this one. My first apartment and office were downtown, and I would walk up Wall Street and over to Broadway to get to work, and for those several years, it was hard walking up Broadway hearing the echoes of the memorial service going on. I’d get to work and feel this strange compulsion to stream the service that was happening just several hundred feet away.
My thoughts go out to anyone who lost someone fourteen years ago or who was here in the city then and has a particularly hard time with this day. I’m off to our studio in LIC for work, and I’m proud that our show today will include a nod to the date.
this was a touching, personal tribute and so heartfelt to read. i remember exactly where i was, too, a junior in college in upstate NY, and the emotional impact as our professor told our early morning class what happened was devastating. i work downtown one block from the WTC right now and was flooded with reminders coming into my building today of how much this city has done to unite and rally together around such an unthinkable tragedy, even 14 years later. so great that your show is commemorating the date. xo
Thank you for sharing this today. I too could not post anything else but my thoughts on that tragic day. It was such a scary time and still brings up the feelings and memories, not just today but every time I am in the city. I will never forget and my thoughts are forever with those that lost their lives and their families and friends who were left behind.
Thank you for your post today. I, too, was a freshman in college, having moved from home only three weeks prior. I was much farther away, in North Carolina, in the midst of five military bases. I will never forget walking into health class and seeing the news coverage on tv, and the Army Reservist who was in my class that didn’t come back after that day.
My thoughts and prayers are with those who lost their lives, their families, and the first responders who worked tirelessly that tragic day and the days, weeks, and months to follow.