5 Years Later
It's mind boggling to think of how one day can change your life forever. It changed the way I thought about the world. It changed Vegas. It changed our marriage. It changed our life & until then, the great way it was going.

We are now part of a generation that has experienced extreme trauma & terror at it's worst. Much like past generations who lived through WWI, WWII, Pearl Harbor & Vietnam, we will always talk about 9/11 & the subsequent war on terrorism. Where we were, what we were doing, how it effected us & how we will always remember.

That day I didn't have to go to work until later that afternoon. Bill was already at work when I woke up. I don't know what I was doing until our neighbor, Jesse, came knocking frantically on our door. I usually didn't answer the door when he was there because he was a DJ who lived up to the stereotype. He totally creeped me out. He made very poor choices with the consequences of getting utilities turned off & running out of money for food. Bill & I were nice enough to help him out with food for him & his dog, hot water & sometimes, a warm place to hang out. I thought he needed something when he showed up that morning.

I let him in & he told me to turn on the TV. We watched the news for a while in absolute shock. He left shortly before I watched the second plane crash into the second tower. My stomach dropped & I didn't know what to think. I watched the chaos in sue as people were trying to escape to safety. I watched in horror as people jumped from the towers. I watched as another plane hit the pentagon. The towers collapsed & a plume of destruction flowed through the streets of New York. I watched as information came about that flight 93 crashed in Pennsylvania. I started to sob.

I was glued to the T.V. I kept watching, even though they were reporting the same thing over & over & over again. I will never forget the video of the Doctor who strangely had a camcorder with him. I watched his first hand experience of trying to help others as they were all engulfed in dust & debris from the falling towers. I cried even harder.

I still went into work that afternoon. We had patients show up, but it was very surreal. Very quiet. The news was on the whole day. The head Doctor & director of the office had parents living in New York & a brother who was an airline pilot. He was lucky enough to find out early that every one was ok.

We weren't sure what to do for the rest of the day, other than live. Bill & I were supposed to go to the 311 concert at the House of Blues, but it had been cancelled. There was nothing to do but stay home & continue watching the news. Not that we were in any mood to do differently however, the constant coverage was really getting to be too much to handle.

Vegas became a ghost town after that. It was so strange. There weren't any tourists. There weren't any planes. There was nothing. It took a toll on the economy. People started to lose their jobs. Casinos were laying off people left & right. Businesses started to close. Bill lost his job too.

He came to my office the day after 9/11. He took me into the massage therapy room & told me that he had been let go along with 3 or 4 other co-workers. I cried & cried & cried. I didn't know what we were going to do. He hugged me & assured me that everything would be ok.

We were losing patients at the office because they were losing their jobs & health insurance & couldn't continue treatment. The Doctor started letting some people go. I was fortunate enough to stay (because I was the one running pretty much the entire office), but my bonuses were taken away & my salary was cut in half. Bill & I were in financial trouble now.

Bill was unemployed for six months. In those six months, he tried to get a business up & going with our friend Joe. It went nowhere. Then he found a job & shortly after that, they let their people go & closed. Then he found another job. It wasn't what he wanted to do, but it brought money in so we could eat. I started working at the gym as a second job to bring in more money & as a job to transfer to when we moved to Oregon. We had to get out of Vegas. It was a dead-end place for us. It was killing us.

With stints of unemployment & my decrease in pay as well, we were drowning. We had debt from our wedding & getting our life started. We were working on it & doing fine before 9/11. After Vegas fell apart, we were in over our heads. We had to file for bankruptcy. This was the last straw. I was moving to Portland to go back to school, even if it meant living in our car. Our time in Vegas was up. Our luck ran out.

9/11 & our life there after makes me think about many things. It makes me think about how lucky we were to stay together during one of our most challenging times in life. Others weren't so lucky. There were husbands, wives, fathers, mothers & children lost on that day. We still have each other. It reminds me to cherish out time together, because you never know what the future may bring.