I thought I had recovered from my mother's crash. Then the planes crashed into the Twin Towers.

Photo by Nathan DeHart

I watched the planes fly into the Twin Towers on Sept. 11, 2001, from my futon in a tiny apartment in Seattle.

Moving there on a whim from California with no job, no friends and no plan for my future had been the bravest thing I ever did. And my success in finding a job and making friends there filled me with more hope for my future than I ever remember having.

But as I watched the smoke billow out of skyscrapers and cover the screaming city below with ash, I felt all my hope and bravery topple, as every scrap of security I had stitched together the past 16 years was ripped apart, leaving me blanketed in a crippling fear that it took me ten years to pull off.

And almost as long to figure out why: That the terror of 9/11 had pushed me back to the day my mother died, snapping the cable on my life and sending me crashing to the floor all over again.

Only this time I fell past the floor into a new horror. Because while my mother’s death had dissolved just my family and sense of safety forever, the attack on 9/11 did that for the whole country. 

One family could recover from a loss. Cars crashed all the time. But planes crashing into skyscrapers? How could anyone, anywhere, ever feel safe again?

Like many others, I didn’t want to fly ever again, but I also never wanted to drive again. That woman who explored her new city so much that lifelong residents said I had seen more than them? She never wanted to leave the house again. That woman who jumped in a car heading over a mountain pass in the snow so she could cross-country ski in a winter wonderland? She was now terrified to even drive to work. 

But I had to find a way to feel OK behind the wheel again. So I did, with a little help from a raccoon named Nancy.

 

That was cool.