Remembering 9/11

Today was an epic fail mental health day, but if you ask me, it was unavoidable, inevitable.

Once upon a time, I temped for a financial services company in Sales & Marketing of Derivatives on the trading floor of World Financial Center. I won't say which building or which firm. My assignment had started in August 2001 and was scheduled to end on September 11, 2001.

That morning, my niece was extremely adamant that I wake the hell up early and ride the subway with her on our way to work.

There was never an explanation, but it saved my life.

If I'd left home later, there's nothing but a melange of horror stories of where I might have been.

The Concourse.
At Duane Reade in the Concourse picking up my photos (back when film was still used in cameras)
In between the Towers
The footbridge from World Trade Center to World Financial Center
Winter Garden
Who the fuck knows

I arrived early to work and got a blueberry muffin and orange juice. I'd removed my sneakers and put on my ultra high heel black boots. You'd die for weather as glorious as that day. I felt stylish in a black turtleneck and dove grey slacks with a nice break to every step. My hair was braided back into a Yaki ponytail.

I looked amazing.

On trading floors, it's typical to have flat screen TVs playing stock market type stuff, CNBC was on all day.

I was enjoying my muffin when a loud sound, like a semi truck going over a gargantuan pothole, shook my bones and the whole room. The room: double high ceilings, wrapped around the corner of the entire floor. HUGE, in other words.

"What was that?" I heard someone behind me ask.

Since I was a transplant and hadn't lived in the city during the car bomb in the World Trade Center parking garage, I wasn't sensitive to disturbances like this.

Minutes later, a small group gathered at the southern windows. Debris on fire fell in the near distance. Then bodies.

What the hell?

Someone changed the channel on the TV to the news. Something had plowed into North Tower, but the hole looked kinda small on the screen.

We speculated. A drunk pilot of a Cessna maybe?

"Oh, God, my parents are going to worry," I thought, so I called them to set their minds at ease.

"What?" My mom hadn't seen the news, so I had to break it to her, but I didn't know anything for certain, except I was intact and she shouldn't worry.

I continued answering the phone, since that was my job. People asked if we were OK, would NYC recover? I remember clearly saying, "We're New Yorkers. It's a hole in a building. Of course we can fix that. Business as usual."

Second impact. The whole room froze in shock and fear.

"That was no accident." Did I think that, say that, or hear that? I don't know.

"Let's get everyone out of here," I heard my boss say.

"Get the fuck outta there!" I heard in my ear.

What does get the fuck outta there mean? I'm alone. Where am I going? Do I take the elevator? What about my muffin? I don't know. Get the fuck out!

I forgot my glasses.

I forgot to change back into my sneakers.

I put on my denim jacket.

I took the elevator down, but my normal exit would have led me directly to the World Trade Center concourse to the subway, and that was clearly out of the question. I exited a door I'd never been through before to a street I'd never been on before. I faced crowds barely moving. They were too busy looking for a vantage point to see the hole in North Tower. It still seemed so small, but that's an  illusion. The smoke was black, the flames shot out several feet.

No one had cell signals. People got angry and frustrated. Of course, they had people to call.

I needed to call my people, too. The last person I'd call would be my mother, because I had no way to assure her that I'd be fine. I had no idea. I think I finished eating my muffin and swallowed the last of my orange juice. A tiny yellow bird with a bleeding wing floundered on the sidewalk, surrounded by shuffling feet. Someone with a backpack paused, noticed the little doomed creature and picked it up gently.

At least one innocent life got saved that day.

My faith in humanity had hope because of that gesture for a helpless bird who had no way of returning the favor.

Police roped off all passageways to the Twin Towers. I overheard that Stuyvesant High was allowing emergency calls. It was my first and only visit to Stuyvesant High. I waited on line and called my niece, who worked in Midtown (for a super fucking cool technology company, I might add).

It surprised me to hear her whole building was being evacuated because the United Arab Emirate Embassy was headquartered in it. Potential target. We had few options. The City shut down the tunnels and bridges. We decided to meet at our cousin's job in (potential target) Times Square.

I headed on foot (in those boots and turtleneck) up the West Side Highway with hundreds or thousands of other all-of-a-sudden pedestrians. Literally an endless stream of emergency vehicles, bumper to bumper, came from the opposite direction TOWARDS the towers. I loved them all. Checking out the plates, I saw New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, and Massachusetts. I loved them so deeply, my chest ached for them. Every single one.

Did I mention the weather? Hot, dry, gorgeous.

I arrived at a pier, so I rested. A beige cloud started swallowing North Tower, and I WOULD NOT ACCEPT THAT SOUTH TOWER WAS FALLING.

Back in motion, I passed a pushcart and needed water. I waited on line and heard the man charge $5 for a bottle of water. I can't say whether that's price gouging, but he was taking a risk by being there, and for fuck's sake, I had $5 on me. I looked downtown just in time to see the needle of North Tower slide from the sky and get engulfed again in smoke, ash and dust. And blood, but that was an anguishing mental image, not something my eyes saw.

"Oh, my God, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God." I lost all capacity for any other words in the English language. There was nothing else I knew how to say. Those emergency responders went down there to save people and they're getting fucking crushed.

The tall man ahead of me on line turned around to face me, like in my face face me. "WHAT?!"

I looked at him. "Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God." I looked back downtown.

He looked, too.

I bought my water and kept going, stopping to remove my boots. At Chelsea Piers, I waited for a bus - any bus - maybe a crosstown bus to get to 6th Avenue, and I could transfer from there until I fucking got to fucking Times Square.

I overheard a man say "Thumbs, fingers."

I overheard a man say, "They got the Pentagon," and I wondered where I'd been hiding that I didn't know the Pentagon had been attacked. It didn't occur to me that he meant that same day.

Exiting the bus at 6th Avenue, I saw my bank branch! "Oh, what if I have to stay the night in the City? What if there's another attack? What if it's the apocalypse? What if (etc.) and only cash is accepted? I'd better get some. Right. Fucking. NOW!"

While waiting for another bus to continue moving toward Times Square, police and ambulances raced up 6th Avenue, dust still rolling off their tops. I think I may have been around 28th Street by this time, and the volume of dust and ash it would take to still roll off a vehicle from the World Trade Center boggled my brain.

Meanwhile, shoppers shopped, diners dined, laughers laughed. Surreal. Aggravating. Infuriating. How DARE anyone carry on as if the Towers haven't just fallen to rubble? Couldn't they see down 6th Avenue and notice a conspicuous absence of epic proportion?????

I bought a pair of sneakers on the street. They didn't fit quite right, and the guy didn't have change for a $20. Sure he didn't. Whatever. $20, $3 it made no difference.

I can't remember if I got on another bus or not, but sooner or later, I reached my cousin's job. They'd offered to let employees stay to eat, stay to spend the night, whatever they needed. The city was on lock down. My niece, our cousin, and I all had sandwiches and watched news on the TV.

A FUCKING FULL SIZE COMMERCIAL PLANE?! THAT'S WHAT HIT THE DAMN TOWERS?? Who would? Why would? Who could? Now what? Oh my God!

I couldn't believe what I was seeing on the TV.

We stayed there for a few hours, until the island opened up around 4:00pm. From that point, the day disappears from my memory. Crushed under the weight.

#NeverForget911
#911Anniversary