Eight Years Ago Today....

Eight years ago today, I woke up on a bright sunny morning in mid-town Manhattan (34th Street to be exact, about two blocks from Macy's department store). I had just moved to New York City for grad school at NYU on September 1st, 2001. I had already been to classes a few times and I was on our dial-up internet checking my email. As soon as I got off, I realized there were messages on our voicemail. The messages were for my roomate Lauren. She got off the phone and turned on the tv. To our horror, we saw on television what was going on outside our window not far from where we lived. I immediately called Charles (who was just a friend of mine at the time). He lived in Greenwich village (closer to the World Trade Center) and said he had seen the first plane hit the tower out of his window. We talked for a minute and then I decided to go up on the roof of our apartment building with my roomate Lauren. We stood up there with several other student residents of the building. We were all staring south and had quite a clear view of the two towers. We were all talking and relating our disbelief, when suddenly the first tower began to shake and rumble and then collapse and fall right before our eyes. I remember now so vividly that I leaned over the railing and felt completely nauseous and physically sick to my stomache thinking about the people now being squashed and killed as the tower collapsed.

We went back down to our apartment. I called my mom to let her know I was ok. Of course, she knew nothing of the whole incident since she was two hours behind us in Utah. Charles then made his way up to my apartment. We watched more television and then proceeded to return back down to the village to his place. My roomate Lauren who was from Westchester was going to try and walk home. She had contacted a sibling and was going to join the thousands already trying to cross the various bridges leading out of Manhattan on foot. It was her first time living away from home and she was not doing well.

Charles and I spent the day watching tv, staring out the window and talking to his roomates. We walked the streets a bit and were completely surprised at how eery and quiet it was. It was definitely unnerving. It got worse however that night. I could not imagine going home to an empty apartment so I stayed with Charles that night. The streets continued to be quiet and void of people. Occasionally we would see large military tankers and hummers driving up and down. I felt like I was trapped in the middle of a war zone. I could hardly sleep knowing there was a huge graveyard of dead or slowly dying people trapped not far from where I lay. It was afraid and I contemplated leaving grad school and NY and going home to Utah.

The next few days were a blur with no school, lots of news watching, pep talks from relatives to stay in school at least for the semester and quiet, empty streets. Even riding the subway was a different experience where people didn't dawn their usual icy stares, but instead talked to each other and expressed feelings of unbelief, fear and uncertainty.

My roomate Lauren never came back to our apartment until she moved out two weeks later. I now had the whole place to myself and she even felt so bad that she left me her brand new television. Charles and I used it our entire marriage until just last year when we got rid of it and upgraded.

Things looked up and I did stay in NY. I loved school even though it was (and still is) the most difficult thing I have ever done. Charles and I traveled to London together at the end of September in a very empty airplane. We loved the room to stretch out and sleep. Our trip was far from pleasant. However, we were engaged by the end of November and married in January. The rest is history...