story6170.xml

story6170.xml

born-digital

story

yes

no

2002-09-12

I work as a reporter at a small town paper, and my husband in a sheriff's deputy here in the county. He was off work that day and happened to be here in the office with me when our receptionist said that a plane had hit the World Trade Center. I remember saying "On purpose?" and she said she didn't know. I remember the events starting to unfold after that, we started listening to the radio and I just went blank. Actually my thoughts were racing at the speed of light, but it was going so fast that it felt as if I could think of nothing at all. The reporter in me wanted to be there, covering it, seeing it first hand, taking pictures, and the part of me that wants to be at least a reserve police officer someday wanted to be there to help. All those people, I kept thinking, all those people are losing their lives. It was the most horrific thing to me, something I could've never imagined.
The strangest thing about the event to me other than the obvioius is that the day before it happened I wasn't feeling well and I stayed home from work. My husband was sleeping and I was watching my soaps when out of nowhere I had this overwhelming urge that something was going to happen. I didn't know when or where or what it related to, I just felt so strongly that something was going to happen, to the point I woke my husband up to tell him. I was freaked out about it for the whole rest of the day, because the feeling was getting stronger. It is possible to know such things? Is it possible that when a concentration of evil such as that is about to make its presence known that people who are extra sensitive can actually feel it? I don't know the answer to that for certain, I just know what I felt, and I remember the look on my husband's face when he remembered that part of what I said was that whatever was going to happen would change everything. Those were the very words I used. We both still get goosebumps everytime we think about it.
As it happened, and all day long with the images on TV burning themselves into my memory, I cried a lot, I cried for all those people and their families and indeed this whole world, for look at what it had come to! I got very upset thinking of those in wheelchairs who didn't get out because there were no provisions for such a thing, that really bothered me a lot. I didn't think I had enough tears in me to cry as much as I did that day and in days to follow. In our paper this week, which came out on Wednesday, we wrote various stories about 9/11 and one year later, I still couldn't shake the lump in my throat or the tears in my eyes as I had to write about that day. And I don't think that the tears will ever completely go away.