email457.xml

email457.xml

born-digital

email

unknown

yes

2002-08-20

I'm glad I'm unhurt and I'm glad I'm alive, but right now I'm not glad I left New York 5 months ago. Even though the entire country is experiencing utter shock and grief, I feel like I am mourning alone out here. I want to be surrounded by my friends that got to know & love New York City alongside me throughout four years [of college].

I hear descriptions of what Manhattan is like right now from you and my other friends there and I wish so strongly that I was there to experience it with you. I want to stumble around the streets and see things with my own eyes, smell the horrible smells, inhale the smoke. Most of all I want to look south (or north, as I did in Jersey City) to see the Twin Towers, and see with my very own eyes that they are no longer there. I am not being melodramatic or masochistic. I just want to make myself believe that what really happened, happened. Because part of my brain keeps insisting that what I saw on live television on Tuesday morning didn't really occur.

I love you and I'm thinking about you.
ANNA

9/15/01