nmah6321.xml

nmah6321.xml

born-digital

story

yes

no

2003-10-01

In the early morning hours of September 11th I got the chance to sleep in because I had taken the day off from work to study for an American History exam that was schedule for later that evening at my college. I woke up and walked the dogs outside. When I came back into my apartment, the telephone was ringing and I picked it up. It was my fiance calling and he told me that a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center. I turned on the TV and my first vision was of a tower with black smoke billowing from it. My first thought was an optimistic one, I said to myself, "Oh boy, this is going to be a long day of watching helicopters trying to get people out from the rooftop and how the heck are the firemen going to put out the fire?" In the instant after that thought, the second tower was hit and I screamed on the phone, "a bomb just went off in the second tower!" not being able to see that a plane had struck the tower. I got off the phone with my fiance and went to our bedroom window to see if I could see anything. We lived in Neptune City, NJ at the time, which is right off of the Atlantic Ocean in Monmouth County. I don't know why I went to look, but soon I saw why my instinct was telling me to look. The blue sky with white beautiful clouds that I had seen just a few minutes earlier, was covered by a dark grey "cloud" that swept across the sky from the ocean. That scared me. I realized just how close I was to NYC and I started to worry at that point. I thought it was the end of the world and that more was going to happen that day. I called my mom and my coworkers and was the first to inform them of what had happened. I told my mom to please go home and that my fiance and his coworkers were all leaving work for the day. I was talking to my boss on the phone when the first tower (the second tower struck) started to collaspe. I really started crying then, it seemed very real and very frightening. After the first tower collasped, I knew the second one would be next to collaspe as did the TV reporters so it was just a matter of when. When the reports came in that 2 other plans were also hijacked and heading towards D.C. I went into "survival mode", or "shock". I didn't cry anymore, I had no expression on my face, all my muscles were very tense and I had pain all around my neck and upper arms. I was just waiting for the next thing to happen. I kept thinking, "what's going to happen next?" "is this it?" "is it over yet?". My fiance came home and he was glued to the tv. He would display anger at times and that would worry me. I didn't know how people were reacting and I didn't want to be home with someone who was going to flip out. I wanted to crawl into bed and hide under the covers, he was ready to go out and kick some terrorist ass. I learned the big difference between Type A and Type B personalities that day. I wanted to run and hide, he wanted to fight. Thankfully, he stayed put and while the hours pass and he remained glued to the TV, I did crawl into bed around 2:00pm and slept until 5:00pm and was glad that nothing else had happened. All college classes were cancelled for the evening so luckily, I didn't have to worry about my test.
The next morning, driving to work, I kept looking at all the people driving in cars, I was looking for their facial expressions. Were they crying? Were they scared? Did they know someone who had died? Did they work in the city? I wanted to know all about them. I went to work in my college library and I remember professors coming in and they would start crying when we talked about what had happened. I never thought I see that and it made me feel scared that even people who had lived through wars and seen terrible things would be breaking down. I then realized that this was the worst thing that ever happened in our lifetime.

My life has changed because after September 11th, I no longer let fear stop me from living and doing the things that I want to do.

All the people who were just doing their jobs like everyone else and they didn't expect to get killed going to work.

I didn't have an American flag, but since 9/11 I have bought some and we fly them and display them on holidays and on 9/11.