I took a break from work this morning to watch the September 11th tapes on television. They played the news coverage for that horrifying morning at the exact time when it would have happened on this day in 2001 and kept the footage rolling through the morning. For some reason, the time synchronicity made the memory all the more disturbing as I sat there and felt the same feelings all over again.
Where were you on the morning of September 11th, 2001? My company's building was about 20 minutes outside of New York City. If I drove home, I could step outside my house and get a view of the New York skyline. Those who know that skyline view of course know the missing part of the picture after that day. It haunted us in both our sleeping and waking hours.
At 8:37, I was approaching my desk in the creative department of the retail giant where I worked. Before I had a chance to settle in, from a neighboring cubicle came the voice of Ed, my coworker. Ed was a NYC-cop-turned-copywriter who was constantly tuned in to world happenings. He said something like, "Oh my God, get on CNN.com... a plane crashed into the World Trade Center!"
I remember trying to get on the website but traffic was flooding their server. There was some confusion; people had turned on radios if they had them, to try and piece together what was going on. Somehow a group of us ended up down the hall in the VP's office, huddled around a small TV in time to see the second plane crash into the second tower. I remember feeling the hairs on my arms stand up as I looked on in terror and disbelief. My friend Aparna stood next to me, crying. I had a vague feeling that the world was coming to an end and that I was suspended in time somehow.
At some point, I think I was able to get on CNN where the headlines were changing every five minutes. I remember trying to make a call and not being able to get through to my parents or my best friend, both of whom were about an hour and a half away. If memory serves, cell phone service was out as well, which really heightened the apocolyptic feeling that I couldn't shake and that was making my skin crawl.
Some of this day is a blur... just listening to various people speculate about how it happened, hearing the news of the Pentagon and again thinking that life as I knew it was about to end... wanting to jump out the window and run somewhere, anywhere.
At some point I was able to connect with my parents, who told me they were worried about my cousin, that she worked in one of the towers and no one in the family was able to determine her whereabouts due to the phone lines in New York being out.
There were a lot of bomb scares, I recall. I had forgotten about this until just now when I saw a news reporter from that day, talking about how they'd received a bomb threat at Styveson High School. I think even our area was receiving many bomb scares. I often wonder why there are so many people in this world so willing to contribute to mass hysteria.
Before the morning was over, we were called to a meeting out in the courtyard. The vice president of the company gave us some type of paternal speech and tried to console everyone. He urged us to reach out to each other in this time of need. He also suggested that if anyone had a spare bed in their home, to offer it to coworkers who would have been traveling across the river tonight because they wouldn't be able to return home. He alluded to some as-yet-unknown future gesture of benevolence that our corporation would be offering to the victims of this heinous act. I recall seeing two of my graphic designer friends both crying, and I just looked at them with wide eyes. Even though lots of people had plenty to express, I couldn't find words. Nothing seemed like the right thing to say.
I can't recall if this was the same day as 9-11 or maybe the next day, but at some point I found myself in a church on my lunch break. It struck me as very strange and disheartening that not another living soul was inside the church. I'm not a religious person but, you know, God is still in my roots and I guess that's who I turn to in a crisis. So I babbled a few prayers for humanity, maybe cried a little and left.
At some point, I drove down to my best friend's to stay there - her house and family just felt like more of a safe haven than the people who I lived with at the time. I remember watching the news with her, seeing the names of those whose lives were lost. There was a guy who worked down there that she had known at school and was concerned about (we found out later he was on the missing persons list).
I worried about my ex boyfriend, old coworkers who had left for jobs in the city, schoolmates, friends of friends. Surprisingly, it turned out that everyone who I knew personally had somehow managed, miraculously, to not be in the trade center on that morning. The worst story was my old boyfriend's roommate who worked in the financial district and said he saw bodies falling from the sky and appendages in the street as he tried to claw his way out.
I remember candlelight vigils, and a sense of brotherhood and togetherness that I'd never known before. It was a strange irony - precious and beautiful, and yet so tragic that it took an event like this to get people to reach out and be fully present for each other. Those who did not live near New York City during that time may never know the sense of deep mourning that I knew then, and for a long time after. Even if you didn't know someone personally, you still knew of someone who knew someone who was gone. People were just kinder in general - concerned and looking out for each other. It felt like God had his arms clasped around us in a protective and mournful embrace. I wish that feeling could have stayed, but as the emotional wounds of 9-11 slowly healed, so did our need to need each other.
I tried to organize a group of people for volunteering - helping to load supplies onto boats that would be crossing from Jersey City into New York to help the victims. When I finally got through to the Red Cross, they told me they were overrun with offers, and that the best thing I could do was donate supplies - things like bottled water, garbage bags. I took two loads of supplies in my car at different times and dropped them at the local Red Cross. It was a small gesture that didn't quite fill the empty hole inside of me that had been ripped out by two commercial airline jets, but it was better than nothing.
I had this desperate feeling for a long time after, that my entire profession (advertising) was complete bullshit (it is) and that my work and life were without meaning or purpose. I didn't want to hear anyone's "expert" take on the situation but it seemed like everyone had a lot to say, so I withdrew to some extent.
As my roommate told me, "It's like you've put up a wall around yourself."
I was having trouble with my boss, who preferred to ignore the impending tragedy in favor of talking nonstop about remodeling his bathroom. He was yelling at people who wanted to have their radios on or discuss "the war on terror" on company time. I wanted to punch him in the face. I ended up going to the creative director to talk about how sad and hopeless I felt. Another woman from the art department somehow joined in our conversation and we had one of those Females Only moments that men will never begin to understand.
I guess as an answer to my plea for something meaningful (ha ha), they assigned me to a couple of September 11th related jobs - one was helping develop the copy for a promotion where kids drew pictures of American flags and submitted them for some kind of contest. There was a corporate donation involved but I can't remember much about it. The truth was that only physical work could have consoled me at that time. I believe that hard labor is good for the soul.
The other thing they had me work on was an "Emotion Game" for kids. Someone had the theory that children who had lost one or both parents in the 9-11 tragedy, or didn't but knew of kids who had, would be having deep emotional troubles at this time (duh) and might turn to retail toy manufacturers for the answer (?).
So they brought some child psychologist in who wanted to create the aforementioned Emotion Game as a means for kids to get in touch with and deal with feelings. Someone was designing a game board, and they were having me develop characters - Happy, Sad, Angry, Scared, and so forth, and write a little story about them.
Happy was a sunshine, sad was a raindrop, angry was a flame, and I can't remember what Scared was.
I wrote this story about a kid named Daniel whose emotions were all arguing with each other inside of his head. Each of the emotions tried to take credit for being The Most Important, and each had his own justification for this. At the end, the emotions decided that all of them were needed to help Daniel feel complete, and I guess they all rode off into the sunset.
I don't know what happened with the psychologist, the game, or the story, and I have no idea if it helped anyone, least of all me.
These are my memories of September 11th. I know, they're trite and pathetic compared to what others went through that day. But this is the reality of life for many of us.
Did the events that took place on this day have something to do with me eventually quitting my job, moving away and starting my own copywriting business?
In a word, yes.
- Dina at Wordfeeder.com
