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Sept. 11: Two years after my
brush with death
For most people, Sept. 11 has come and gone, but
the anniversary will always be important to me because I was a block
away when the first building fell. The people I have met who were
at the World Trade Center that day never stopped associating the event
with their work, and I am no exception.
That day, I stepped outside my office to take a look at the spectacle.
Before I knew what happened, I was blinded by debris and buried under
a pile of people. I pulled myself out of the pile, but I couldn't
see, had no idea where I was, and I couldn't breathe. I worried about
my family until the lack of air became painful. Then I focused all
my hopes on not having an extremely painful death.
There was complete quiet. No one could talk because no one could breathe.
Then I heard cracked glass. I moved toward the noise until I saw a
glow coming from a broken window. Somehow, I lifted myself into a
broken window that was above my shoulders. I found air. And then I
thought only of water. I found my way to a bathroom in that building
and inside there were debris-covered men in ties drinking out of a
toilet. I drank, too.
Days later, I went back to my software marketing job at my Wall Street-based
company, and though no one was really doing any work, I somehow continued
to write my weekly column, furtively, from my desk. Soon, though,
the company laid off almost all the employees, including me. I spent
October in a daze. I spent November and December attending a group
for people with post-traumatic stress syndrome.
The way to deal with post-traumatic stress is to tell your story over
and over again. The theory is that when you are in the moment of trauma,
you have to turn off all your emotions to get yourself through it.
After the fact, in order to stop having nightmares and panic attacks,
you have to experience the emotions you missed.
So I told my story over and over again. And each time, the story was
a little different. (I still tell the story, although to be honest,
most people are sick of it. Even my brother said, "That just
took 25 minutes. Maybe you need an abridged version.")
When I began telling my story I saw myself as an imbecile -- for staying
at work after the first plane hit, for standing so close to the building,
for not trying to help anyone but myself. Later, my story focused
on how I was a lucky person to have come out alive. And I was a lucky
person to have a moment where I thought I was going to die and saw
exactly what I cared about in my life.
This is the process of reframing. How we frame our stories determines
how we see ourselves. It's the glass half-empty, half-full thing:
The trauma of Sept. 11 taught me to frame my life as half-full.
Today, when I tell my World Trade Center story, my focus is on career
change. Today I am the woman who nearly died at the World Trade Center.
I lost my job as a marketing executive. I faced an incredibly tough
job hunt, which I wrote about in my column. In the process, I became
a writer. Turning in a column week after week made me realize that
I was a writer who was calling herself an unemployed marketer.
I used to think career changes were planned and instigated and systematic.
Now I know that some changes could never be planned, and some changes
do not need instigating, they just need recognizing. Positive change
comes to people who can frame their world in a positive light -- even
a world where everything is literally falling down.
-- Posted: Sept. 8, 2003
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