My Story...

I was a freshman in college. I didn’t know much, but I thought I knew everything. I thought was in love with a fool that would break my heart into a million pieces, on a million different occasions. For him, I would be that girl, the one that kept coming back for his lies & “love”. But on this day he was the furthest thing from my mind. It was September 11, 2001 and we had a soccer game in Atlanta, GA. I was going to get to see my family today, at least my mom, dad, & little brother.

Coach told us to meet at the rec center at 9:00 AM sharp…so I slept in and skipped my first class, it was excused, so why not? If you know me, I enjoy what little sleep I get, so of course I slept in till the last possible moment. I woke up, tossed on my warm up suite. It was black Adidas with white stripes up the sides, we used to joke we were mafia. I threw my gear in my bag & slung it over my shoulder. I walked the 3 minutes to the rec center. We had to be early. “Late is unacceptable, on time is late, early is on time,” every coaches rule.

I walked up to the rec center at 8:47 AM. Pickens, a player from the guys team met me on the street. “Games are canceled. Someone just bombed New York.”
I laughed at him. Like anyone would bomb New York. I realize that’s a pompous statement to make, but it seemed totally irrational at the time. In my lifetime we’d never had a battle on our soil and Pick wasn’t known for his seriousness. I brushed past him & waltzed into the rec center. Careless. Naive.

I stopped. The room was silent. Every eye in the room was turned to the tv in the upper right corner of the left wall. It was a tiny tv but you could see it. There was smoke everywhere. There was ash everywhere. My country was under attack. I stood in shock. We all watched as the second plane flew into the South Tower. My knees went weak, military friends & family raced through my mind. I watched as the smoke billowed and filled the screen. I listened to panic. I watched. Safe. I was safe on campus in a small town in South Carolina. I was standing, watching, as people were running panicked through streets of a city I loved. This was a city that captured my heart. And now, now my heart was wrenched, stuttering. We stood there as a team, united in shock, in fear, in unity. And we watched, and we listened. We listened to unsure reporters, to nine-one-one calls, we listened.

Obviously our game was canceled. No one knew for sure if everything was over. No one knew what the next target could be.

At 9:37 AM the news only got worse. They announced another crash. It was the pentagon. This was a city I knew. A place I’d been a thousand times. I’d spent countless summers exploring the glories of D.C. My uncle was career military. He’d spent his life protecting this country. He’d been a high ranking official. He had been stationed in D.C. for years, we visited every summer during that time. He was only retired a few years. This was getting closer & closer to home. It went from my Country, to my City, to my Family.

My Family!

I called my mom. I was crying. Sobbing if I’m going to honest. The lines were busy. I tried again. Busy. We were all dialing now. We all had loved ones to check in with. We dialed & we watched. We were all stunned.

There was another crash. There was more confusion. More silence. More frantic dialing.

I got through to my family over an hour later. I cried to my mom. I held the phone as if it were the last and only connection to civilization. We watched tv all day. News cast after news cast. We prayed. We cried. We were silent. We were united. We held hands. We held each other. We prayed.

I grew up that day. And I grew up quickly. I didn’t learn everything I needed to know in those harrowing moments. But I learned fear. I learned to lean on others. There was a burden that day that I could never bear alone. That our country couldn’t bear alone. We prayed. The power of prayer & unity was overwhelming during the next few weeks. As life slowly returned to some form of normalcy. As New York stood up & refused to wallow. We looked on in hope for the rescues, as miracle stories happened, as we prayed.

I grew up. I didn’t immediately see the guy I thought I was in love with was never going to be any good for me. I didn’t automatically learn to cherish my family. I didn’t start at that moment, on that day, to value every lesson I learned. I did learn to notice the small things, to value family, to cling harder to dear friends. It would be a long time before normal would ever become normal again. Before little things were really seen as just little things….