September 11th. 15 years later.

[mynewunit]

I know a lot of you have thoughts about this anniversary. Start with where you were then, and where you are now.

September 11th, I slept in.  I was in college, in Potsdam, NY, about a 7 hour drive from the World Trade Center.  I ran into my RA who told me "the Twin Towers are gone".  I told him that they can be damaged, but they aren't gone.  Obviously I was wrong. An alumni had some of the beams delivered to the campus about a month later.  We held a campus ceremony and that was the first time I remember crying over the specific events of the day. 2 years later we visited the site in NYC. The massive holes in the ground that still remained, were surrounded by chain link fences and plywood filled with pictures of the events and photos of those lost.  On top of the tragedy, the remaining hole made it even more moving, solemn and frustrating.

Today I live a 3 hour drive away.  I am still with the girl I was dating, now married almost 12 years, 2 daughters, a house. Went to the memorial about 2 years ago. The wound is still inside of me.  I have lived my whole life in the state of New York. New York took it personal when they set off a truck bomb in 1992 and killed 2 people.  We saw it as a challenge to us when they attacked us on 9/11.  The other site attacked was a military target.  They came after the People/City and State of New York. 

[flipside]

Wow man. You were really close to ground zero... Thanks for sharing.

Mine isn't nearly as interesting as yours.

September 11th I was in Dublin, Ohio (just outside of Columbus) working. I was on the phone with my brother (he was in Austin at the time) and he was bitching about how he stepped on a nail. I told him to "suck it up, Nancy!" when he told me to turn the TV on. I thought it was just a piloting error by a small, single engine/prop, but no... It was something that turned on this primal instinct that I hadn't felt in a long time... The event made me want to kill bad guys... In a very bad way.

I called a friend, that was still in the military, to see if they were going to reinstate inactive fleet guys. He said he'd call me back. I got my sea bag ready, but he never called me back. It was bittersweet. More bitter, to be honest.

From there, I didn't do anything but read everything that I could about what was going on. I've never been big on TV/Media, so I scoured the "limited" interweb access that we had back then, to find everything I could... That's really all to my experience with 9/11. It was an extremely tragic event that I'll never forget, even though I wasn't at ground zero.

Fast forward to today, and I'm now in Houston TX working for a different company. I always considered TX the last state in the US that would be fighting if sh!t hit the fan, but that's not why I moved here. I moved here because the economy tanked and I needed to work. My ex was also pretty tired of her job up in Ohio-land, so she was ready for some change as well. That was 2006/7. 2 jobs later, 2 degrees later, here I be! She and I did divorce, but it was totally mutual. I have a 17 year old and 11 year old, and all they know, or want to know, is Texas. Well, at least I think so.