I wasn't here on 9/11. I was working for Target Corporation as a copy editor, and I was watching television with the rest of the world in my co-worker's cube; we were watching what was thought to be a freak plane crash, which was then confirmed to be a horrible terrorist attack brought on by Islamic zealot extremists, freaks.
That passing year could not have gone by any slower than it did; I could not wait to move to New York and rally my support and chase my dreams. I lived like a pauper and saved as much money as I could so that I could move to NYC less than a year later. Almost ten years later, I am still here, and the city has revitalized and redefined itself.
There are more eloquent, more poignant, much more important pieces/posts/articles on 9/11 written by those whose losses on that day proved irreplaceable, insurmountable, so I won't even go there. I have no right to...
But, I will say that the most chilling and horrifying thing that I heard about that day was that the entire borough of Manhattan - from Wall Street to the upper-UWS - smelled like "barbequed meat".
