This is another Essay from 2005:
A journal entry that was written September 11, 1999, describes a curious dream I had the night before. I don’t normally keep a journal but this dream was so interesting and ominous to me I told my mother and my best friend about it and thought it important enough to write it down. This dream was vivid and real feeling, not at all strange for me but the details of that dream that was still fresh in my mind. I had an office, with my own desk and computer; I was dressed in a suit with pantyhose and high heels. People who I seemed to know but never met before were coming in my office one-by-one and telling me news that I could not believe. What was said by each person I could not recall, but with each person’s periodic report, my heart sank deeper, a sadness swept over me until I awoke saturated in tears. Two years later terrorist brought this dream to reality, destroying an important building to my family’s history, killing so many innocent, hardworking, honest, Americans, and shattering the secure, confident view I had of my future. Life could never be the same.
It was September 11, 2001, when my nightmare became reality. I was working as an accounts manager of an oil company in Chamblee when I felt the unmistakable fog of deja vu. Nine-Thirty that morning, Bob, the chemist, came in and said, “HEY, go online and look at the news; a plane just crashed into the World Trade Center”! My jaw dropped and all I could say to myself was “deja vu”. I figured it must have been a freak accident. How could a passenger plane just crash into a huge skyscraper? Being that my entire family is from Brooklyn, with the exception of my baby cousin and I who are born and raised here in Atlanta, I thought this was quite significant so I called my mother. My mother, from Sheepshead Bay, started her first job at the World Trade Center. She got the position through a temporary agency and worked for many companies within the buildings. She was already on the other line with her high school best friend whom she hadn’t been in contact with in over 10 years making sure she and her family was okay. She knew that her friend worked in one of the buildings. Fortunately, her son was sick and she had to stay home.
I had a lot of work to do so I continued and decided I would hear all about it later. A little while later James, the blender, came in and said, “Can you get the news on that there computer? Two planes crashed into the World Trade Center and another one hit the Pentagon”. My heart sank and I brought up the Associated Press online and saw the pictures; tears ran uncontrollably down my face messing up my make-up. My uncle, who grew up in Coney Island, started his plumbing career as a pipe fitter during the building of the World Trade Center. I called my uncle’s plumbing shop to see if they were watching the news. My cousin quickly told me they were watching it and they were on all the other lines contacting the rest of the family to make sure everyone was okay. Obviously, I was fine so she hung up on me and continued contacting the family.
My mother returned my call and she told me they believed it was a terrorist attack and there were other planes missing. Then the buildings collapsed. For my family, this was devastating. My family essentially “got their start” in those buildings. I’ve never been to New York and have no personal attachments to the buildings other than they looked nice. What really hit me hard where all the people who were in the buildings getting buried alive and those who did not want to be crushed jumped to their deaths from the windows. To top that all off, this was done intentionally. All sense of security and confidence I had toward my future was shattered; I couldn’t in a million years have expected something like this to occur, I also did not know what to expect next, therefore I could not know what to expect in the future.
My life plan had to be altered to include audacities, such as people who have no regard towards human life; would kill themselves and others in “Gods name”, and the people who would celebrate this. So many loved ones, human beings, Americans; so many innocent lives lost, for no good reason. Thank God my family was unharmed. Two towers that hold the background of my family are destroyed and a smoldering ruin lies in the middle of the city that my family called home. Two beautiful landmarks reduced to rubble and human carcasses, a loss of security in my own country, and an indefinite change of plans for my life. Life will never be the same.
