Well, I've been dreading today. Dreading all the memories coming back, dreading the coverage that I know I'm not going to help but watch, dreading the thought of remembering the ones who are gone - my mind recreating their last moments, the feelings of the loved ones left behind. Today will be a very hard day for us all. No bellyaching or bitching about people today. We're all in the same boat. I just wanted to share something I posted on a board not too long ago...

On the morning of September 11th, I was later for work that I usually am. Before running out the door, the TV was on the Today show, which was showing images of the World Trade Center on fire. Katie Couric was reporting that it was an airplane that hit the building, and that chances are it was accidental, there was no cause to suspect foul play. I left, and when I got to work, my coworkers immediately came to me and said 'They shut down Sears Tower. It's been evacuated.' And I asked 'Is this because of the plane that hit the world trade center?' And they replied, 'Plane? There were two.' I had no clue what was going on. At work, we tried accessing the internet to find out what was going on, but there was too much traffic on CNN and MSNBC. It's hard for us to get reception on radios, so we didn't have that either. All the information came from clients that called, and by calling our homes. My late shift coworker told us about the Pentagon. Another client told us that O'Hare was hit. We didn't know what was the truth, and we were not aware of the scope of the horror that was happening in New York. All we knew was that we're one of the tallest buildings in downtown Chicago, and that we could be a target, or close to one. Being on the 33rd floor, I can see the Sears Tower outside of my window, and the John Hancock building outside of another. We were watching both that morning. Finally, at 1pm, they evacuated our building. For some reason, we didn't feel like going home. We went to the local sports bar that we normally hang out at and sat and watched all the different news stations. We sat there in disbelief as we saw image after image. Drinks that we ordered sat untouched as we watched the towers fall. I felt like crying, but I was too stunned, the tears wouldn't fall. Hardly any words were spoken, other than 'This is surreal', 'Can you believe this?'. But no answers were expected. After we couldn't take anymore, we went home. Downtown Chicago was a ghostown, nothing was open. Coming home, we just watched more TV, hours and hours of it, as if it would give some reason for the madness.

So what am I going to do on September 11th? I'm going to go to work, look out the window, watch people. I might go to any memorial that's by me. We'll probably sit around and talk about that day. I'll go home, watch whatever special they have on NBC, knowing that it's not going to give me any answers to the questions that still lie in my head, or offer me any more comfort for the lives that were lost. But I'll still watch it. It's a day that I'll be happy that its over when its done. But, as was said before, this should be a day that we remember that such horrors are not something uncommon. There are others all over the world, casualties whose only crime was to be at the wrong place at the wrong time. We cannot forget that we are not the only ones. But we will get through this day, together, be it as a country, as a community, as a family, and we will always remember.