Twenty-Five Septembers Ago

August 2001.

As far as I was concerned at the time, surviving Y2K had been the biggest hurdle of my generation. Friends was one of the top shows on television, I wanted to dress like Rachel, and my prized possessions were my Nokia cell phone and my CD Walkman.

I had just moved from Astoria, Queens, to Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, and after two years at my job on Park Avenue, I planned to find something in the Financial District that would make my commute into the city easier. I started interviewing with two brokerage companies.

The first interview was in Tower 1 of the World Trade Center, on the 86th floor. The way the elevators worked, the express elevator would go directly from the first floor to the upper lobby and the floors above it. Those express elevators shook as they traveled upward, and it scared me so much that I knew right then and there that I could not do that every day.

The second position I interviewed for was in a building across the street from the World Trade Center at 75 Park Place. I accepted that position right away, partly because of the location and because there were no tall elevators.

My start date was September 3, 2001. I had only just moved to Brooklyn, so I really only knew one train route to get me back and forth from work. My train would bring me into the lower level of the World Trade Center, which was almost like an underground mall.

Every morning, I would walk through there and grab breakfast. Sometimes, if I didn't like what I was wearing to work that day, I would stop in one of the clothing stores, buy a new top or outfit, and change before starting my day. It was something I did on those mornings when I just couldn't find anything in my closet that I liked.

The morning of September 11th, I woke up just like any other morning. But for some reason, I kept hesitating. I found myself sitting on the edge of my bed, completely zoned out, almost like I was daydreaming. That was something I never did.

Commuting into Manhattan is pretty grueling. You can't just casually take your time getting to work. You have to go, go, go. But that morning, I just sat there.

"Get it together. You have to get going," I thought to myself.

I couldn't find anything I wanted to wear. I tried on five different things. Normally, I would have just left early enough to stop at one of the stores in the World Trade Center, buy something better, change, and go to work.

But that morning, I knew I had already wasted so much time zoning out that there was no way I would have enough time to stop in a store. Whatever I was going to wear, I had to decide. I even thought about calling out of work.

I felt that out of sorts. But no. It was a new job. I couldn't call out. I finally got dressed and then, once again, sat on the edge of my bed. I really felt like I should just stay home.

I waited another five minutes. Eventually, I walked out of the townhouse. Going right meant taking the train, my normal route. Going left meant trying one of the express buses I had only recently learned about.

I stood there thinking, I'm already going to be late. I guess I'll try the bus. Before that day, I had never taken the express bus into Manhattan. But for some reason, that morning, instead of making a right… I made a left.

I started walking. It was more blocks than I would have walked if I had taken the train, but I had my Walkman and was listening to the Z100 morning show. It was a cool morning. Everything was going to be fine. I made my way to the bus stop.

You can always tell the regular commuters. People stood in line who clearly knew one another, knew their routines, and knew exactly when the bus would arrive. The first bus came. As it pulled up, I looked through the windows and didn't see an open seat by a window. So I let that bus go.

Another one would be there in a few minutes. I waited. Just like clockwork, the second bus came. Nope. It looked packed.

I didn't want to stand, so I decided I would wait again. When the third bus came, I knew I had to get on. There was no way I could keep playing with time. If I kept waiting, I wouldn't be in my seat at work by 9:00 a.m. So I got on the bus.

I sat in an aisle seat as the bus began heading toward the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel. Just ahead of me, on the right, I noticed a woman sitting in another aisle seat. I asked her, "Can I sit by the window?" She said sure and moved her bag.

I sat down and got myself situated. As the bus began turning onto the highway toward the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel, the woman looked at me and said, "Did you just see that?" She pointed out the window toward the World Trade Center.

"Something hit there. There's fire at the World Trade Center."

From her reaction, she had seen whatever had just happened. I looked toward the towers and saw smoke rising into the sky. At that moment, I had no idea that a passenger plane had deliberately been flown into the building. My first thought was that maybe one of the traffic helicopters had been in an accident.

I remember thinking that whatever had happened was going to cause terrible traffic and that now we were definitely going to be late for work. We entered the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel and sat there in traffic for what felt like a very long time.

No one around me seemed to understand the seriousness of what was happening yet. In a city like New York, traffic can become a nightmare over much less. Because of the way my morning had already gone, I was mostly worried about being late.

I hated being late for work. What we did not know while we were inside that tunnel was what else was happening outside. As the bus finally began to emerge, the atmosphere changed. People toward the front of the bus were becoming alarmed.

We couldn't tell exactly what was happening. Someone on the bus had a video camera and had taken footage outside. The camera was passed toward the back of the bus so the rest of us could see, but all I could really make out on the small screen was enormous amounts of smoke.

It wasn't until we were completely out of the tunnel that I could see what was happening with my own eyes. Both towers were now burning. There were huge areas of damage and thick black smoke pouring into the sky. Burned pieces of paper were raining down everywhere.

I could hear people saying that two planes had hit the World Trade Center. At that point, I still didn't know exactly what had happened. There were so many people saying different things, and information was coming in pieces.

But looking at both buildings burning, I understood one thing. Whatever was happening was intentional. The bus driver called out that he wasn't able to turn right. If anyone needed to get off in that area, this was where he was letting people out.

I jumped off the bus. Somehow, I still had the mindset that I needed to get to work. When I stepped off the bus, the West Side Highway was empty. There was glass all over the road.

What I remember most was the temperature. I could feel the coolness of the morning against the left side of my body, while the heat coming from the burning buildings on my other side felt as though I were standing next to an open oven.

I needed to find my job, if for no other reason than to let them know I was okay. My cell phone was barely working. I managed to reach my mother, who was at her job on Park Avenue, but the call only lasted a few seconds.

I eventually made my way toward Battery Park City, the more residential part of the Financial District. As I walked past stores, people were standing everywhere, staring up at the burning buildings. I ducked into a dry cleaner and asked if I could use their landline.

I called my boyfriend at the time. He told me to get home. Before I could even answer him, I heard a construction worker standing in front of the store gasp. I ran outside to see what he was looking at.

That was when we saw a man falling from one of the upper floors. I could hear the material of his clothing flapping as he came down. Then another person. And another.

I stood there in shock. I had never seen anything like that in my life. I started walking again. Now, everywhere I looked, people were standing and crying. Others were running toward the towers, trying to get closer to see what was happening.

And then something hit me. If these towers fall, I am not far enough away. I started walking faster. Then I started running.

I kept looking back. And then I heard it. It sounded almost like wood cracking, but amplified to a level I can't really describe. The tower was coming down.

I ran into a store. The people inside tried to usher me toward the back room, but all I could think was, No. If this building gets crushed, we'll be trapped back here. So I ran back outside. I happened to see a van.

I banged on the window. Another businessman and I jumped inside, and we yelled at the driver, "Go! Go! Go!" It wasn't until I finally made it home, hours later, that I began thinking back over everything that had happened that morning.

It wasn't until I was finally home, sitting again on the edge of my bed, that the weight of the morning truly began to settle over me.

The television showed the streets I had just traveled. Fire trucks, shattered vehicles, debris, and express buses crushed along the very route I had taken into Manhattan.

I stared at those images and thought about how differently that morning could have gone.

I thought about the train I normally would have taken. The lower level of the World Trade Center I would have walked through. The stores I might have stopped in. The route I knew. The routine I followed every day.

But that morning, for reasons I did not understand at the time, nothing happened the way it normally did.

I don't know why I was given the grace to make it home when so many others did not, and I would never pretend to have that answer. I only know what I felt that morning, what happened afterward, and what I believe in my heart. God was with me.

That night, I watched the news. Over and over, I watched the same images of the planes hitting the buildings. I saw the reports about the Pentagon and learned that another plane had gone down in a field in Pennsylvania. Everything in this normally bustling city seemed so still. So quiet.

The smell of smoke and debris was incredibly intense. After I had cleaned myself off and finally settled into my house, I noticed that I had cuts inside my nose. I hadn't even realized they were there until then. I couldn't stop watching the news.

I eventually fell asleep with the television still on, watching the scenes over and over again, almost as though I needed to convince myself that what I had seen that day was real. I fell into a deep sleep. At some point in the middle of the night, the winds shifted direction. What had earlier been only a faint smell of smoke being carried over Brooklyn now seemed to take over the air.

I woke up in a panic.

I thought my house was on fire.

I ran outside into the middle of the street and turned around to look back at my house. It took me a moment to remember.

No.

This wasn't my house. This was the smell coming from Ground Zero, which was what I was now hearing it called on the news. I stood there in the middle of the street and looked up at the sky. The lights that had been set up to help the rescuers see illuminated the sky. The smell of burning buildings, electronics, fuel, and death seemed to hang in the air like a weight of sadness.

I don't remember the details of the other days that passed that week. They somehow blur together.

But I do remember getting a call from my new boss telling me that on Monday we would be displaced and working out of another location. Our building couldn't be reached. I was told that a steel beam had gone through the building like a javelin, piercing it as though it weren't even a solid structure.

Monday meant I had to go back. There were no trains for me to take back into that part of the city.

I was frightened.

They began using ferries from Brooklyn to get people back into Manhattan who had to return to work. I was so scared to go back that my boyfriend came with me just so I wouldn't have to make the trip alone. I remember walking along ramps that looked as though they had been put together in a hurry, built to corral the masses of people who, like me, seemed reluctant to return.

I walked right to the front of the ferry. Even so many days later, smoke was still rising into the sky, almost like the thin trail of smoke from a candle that had just been blown out, only enormous and seemingly endless.

I put on my Walkman. I needed music to try to calm my nerves. I didn't want to listen to the radio. The constant cycle of news had become too much for me. Instead, I put in a CD from a new band called Coldplay. I liked their current hit, so I figured I would listen to the rest of the album.

As the ferry began making its way toward Manhattan, I landed on a song titled Everything's Not Lost. It felt like that song became the soundtrack to my return to the city that morning. Hearing that gentle voice repeating the idea that everything wasn't lost made me tear up.

I stood at the front of the ferry watching Manhattan get closer. Then we docked. And there I was, moving forward despite the fear of what could happen next. The streets still had rubble.

There were armed military personnel. I even remember seeing a tank near the Exchange. Everything felt surreal. It was as though the world I had known only days before no longer existed and had been replaced by a place that felt like we were at war.

These were the same streets I had walked so carefree just weeks earlier. Now they didn't feel like the same streets at all. Days became weeks. Weeks became months.

But the smell never truly seemed to go away. Eventually, we were able to return to 75 Park Place. That morning was overwhelming. When I turned and looked toward the place I had been desperately trying to reach on September 11th, there was now a wall of rubble.

Everything was broken.

And between the ground and the sky, so much was simply missing. As a New Yorker, being surrounded by buildings was normal. In a strange way, it was comforting. You didn't really think about them being there because they had always been there.

But now the World Trade Center was gone. The only way I could describe it was like someone had reached down and plucked enormous Lego pieces out of a city that had always fit together. There was suddenly this massive empty space where something had always been.

It felt empty.

It felt terrifying.

And more than anything, it felt sad.

In 25 Septembers, I've not been back to that place.

I thank God for His hand over me that morning. September 11, 2001, changed my life forever. I will never forget what I witnessed that day. I will never forget those who went to work that morning and never made it home.

I will never forget the people I watched make unimaginable choices from those upper floors. And I will never forget the firefighters, police officers, first responders, and ordinary people who, while so many of us were desperately trying to get away, willingly ran toward the danger to save the lives of others.