It still hurts, even after 8 years.

[bicrim]

I will never forget being pretty sure that the world I knew was ending. I will never forget Jen driving towards the city, instead of safely away, or her forcing me to go to Jersey City that night, to really accept that our city was different, the towers gone. Just looking over the water, looking at the hole where they had always, always been. We took them for granted, and then they were just gone, and a sense of our city as it was supposed to be was gone, too. For those of us who live so close, it wasn't about watching it on TV, it was our home, it was so real. My father in law at the time was there, but survived. I didn't lose anyone close to me. I was lucky. I spent the day at work, without a TV, just a radio, and seeing clients all day, who were all as hysterical as I wanted to be. I had to hold it together, our boss wouldn't let us go home. I wanted to join the mental health brigade that was at ground zero, but had my leg in a cast and would have been useless. It killed me to not be able to go and help.

I was driving to work when I heard the planes go into the towers. We all thought it was a terrible accident until the second plane hit. When I got to work, no one else had heard. I told them. I still haven't watched the famous TV footage that is most people's memory of the day. My memory is that radio, going to see it that night, and trying desperately to call my family and close friends, to make sure they were still alive.

Comments

[owlsarentaholes.livejournal.com]

I spent half of our drive home today telling Rylie my 9/11 story. It made me tear up to tell it . . . then we listened to: http://www.righteousbabe.com/self_evident.mp3 (the words are posted in my journal for today, and on my facebook).

I have such strong memories of that day, and that whole time period in my life. Oddly, it was a really GOOD time for me, that summer and early fall . . . but 9/11 colors all of it.