.::still blinking::.

I was living at jj’s grandparents house while I was trying to find a new apartment. The one that I was going to live in fell threw. I was living in the upstairs guest bedroom, jj was in the basement. We technically lived together before we were married.

I was on my way to work and jj could hear me upstairs getting ready to go. I was about to leave and he called me on my cellphone and told me that I needed to come and watch what was on tv. I told them that I had to go, or I would be late. He told me it was important.

I went down into the basement, where the tv is. jj grandparents were watching the news. They informed me of what was going on. I sat down for only a few minutes and watched and then I had to go to work. I worked in the computer labs at Utah State University. When I got to work, we turned one of the computers to one of the news stations that had live feed from the Trade Towers. People who came to school that day stood around that computer and just watched in amazement. We could not believe what we were watching. I worked and did what I was supposed to while this was all going on.

jj called me later, and told me that one of the towers was going to collapse. When the first one fell, he told me that lots of buildings where going to fall. They would all damage each other.

When I was finished with work, I went back to jj’s grandparents house and went into the basement and found his grandparents in the same places and positions that I had left them in four hours earlier. I stayed with them until my drawing class started. I was sure that the teacher would let us leave and not have to go to class today. I was wrong. She said, the best way we could fight against this sort of thing was to keep going. We needed to not shut down, we needed to persist in living. I knew she was right, but I yearned to fall asleep and wake up from this bad dream. I was sure that nothing would happen in Logan, Utah. But I was scared anyway.

In the days that followed. I was constantly hooked up to any news source that I could find. I would be doing my homework on a computer and have msnbc.com live news feed playing in the background. Weeks after the towers fell I was still hoping that they would find people alive. I knew that it was not possible, but I wanted it so badly.

I was amazed that we never saw the people that they pulled out of those crushed skeletons of buildings. At first I really wanted to know what had happened to them. Later I understood that out of respect they did not let people like me know what had happened.

On October 5th, 2001, jj proposed to me. We continued to live. But I still searched for any link to these people who had perished. I found a website that had phone messages from people who were trapped in the towers. They knew they were going to die and they had called their loved ones to tell them that they loved them. There was one from a woman to her husband. I don’t remember everything that she said, but she ended it saying, “I love you always.”

I had that inscribed on the inside of jj’s wedding band. I have thought of other things that I would have liked to have put in their since. But at the time, it seemed the most appropriate.

I did not know anyone who was killed that day. I was not personally affected. But I was awakened to the type of world that we live in. In that way I was changed forever.