For those of you who haven’t known me for ten or more years I’ll paint the picture.  Who I was ten years ago.

I was unemployed, still hadn’t recovered from my first big break up, and had no plans for a future.  No desire, no ambition, nothing in my life at the time.  Which meant I slept, a lot.  This meant that when I finally woke up that day, the world had already changed.

I ignored the constant phone ringing.  As I was unemployed, no phone call was good news. Calls were screened and in this case ignored.  Waking up around 10 or 11, getting a drink and some cereal, then turning on the TV and the computer.  Why are half the channels blank?  Why does the front page of Yahoo show some scene from a science fiction  movie?  Why wont the phone stop ringing?

Of all the stupid things, I asked friends that were on AOL Instant Messenger what was going on.  One of them told me to answer the phone this time.  It was all explained, and while many of us have nights during which we feel we’ve lost time, this is the only example I have of gaining time.  Even though I was asleep when everything happened, and I know damn well that I was, I feel like I watched everything live.  Like someone who watched the moon landing on tape delay.  Even though I wasn’t in the moment, my retroactive continuity puts me there.

At the time I only knew one person who lived in all of New York City, and one in the greater DC area.  While its certainly possible that either one of them could have had business in areas attacked, neither person was harmed.  I do consider myself lucky, being an East coaster, to not have a personal tragedy related to that day.

I spent the next 48 hours in front of the TV screen.  Watching every story, seeing every angle, obsessing over every detail.  While much of that was the quest for answers I wonder now if some of the insomnia was out of fear.  The fear that comes from comparing the world when I closed my eyes at 3AM and what I woke up to 8 hours later.  If I close my eyes again, what will I wake up to this time?

But none of this is to make any huge point about terrorism, or patriotism, or any of that.  Its the fact that a day ten years ago was so life changing that most of us remember every detail of our lives on that day and thus can compare ourselves to who we are now.

Ten years ago I felt jobless, friendless, hopeless.  I’m not saying an attack changed all of that around for me.  However, it was tough to be mostly unaffected by the events and yet still feel sorry for yourself.

So here we are, in the future.  I’ve been through many jobs, earned a degree, learned who I was through the trials and errors of relationships, and then the present.  A time where I may be on the cusp of dreams coming true.  A present that wouldn’t have even been possible to imagine then.

I’m not sure what the point of all this was.  I wanted to look back and see how life is now.  Life is better, life is good.  And the biggest lesson I learned is that writing is my outlet.  Working through feelings helps immensely.  I’m fortunate to have found this outlet.

Which is all that all of this was.  I needed to work through these feelings in the form of text.  Thanks for putting up with me.