This morning, I got up and started on SPD. As the page was loading, I checked my email. I noticed I had another email from Dan. It was sent out at 6 a.m. my time. All he wrote was the following:
just leting you guys know i’m ok – gone crazy here, quite close to the bombs but staying in our building cos can’t move anywhere. Will let you know once it’s all over
What in the hell was going on in London?
We turned on CNN and were immediately engulfed by the news ripple moving across the world. I wrote Dan back. I gathered my belongings. And I left for work.
Once outside, I picked the Times up off my doorstep. There was a picture before me. I immediately began to cry. It was the most brilliant photograph featuring a crowd of Londoners. Their faces, which were being rained upon by a downpour of confetti, were draped in pure joy after just being told that they had been awarded with the 2012 Olympic Games. And it’s hard to believe that in less than 24 hour’s, those faces changed from the pure joy I saw before me to absolute horror.
Horror.
I know I sound selfish in writing what I’m about to write, but on my way to the L train this morning, I was afraid to get on. I contemplated working from home or even walking over the Williamsburg Bridge. The L train runs underwater. And when I let Fear take over and I remember those months following September 11 where I spent every day to and from work praying to whatever God might hear me that we not get bombed while under the East River, I lose a little control. I simply can not fathom the possibility of having water pour in from all sides as people run like sewer rats in any direction possible. I worried about that scenario every day. Which is both very selfish and very sad.
New York City is eerily quiet today. Even Grand Central was slower and more subdued. I imagine many New Yorkers are trying to pack away any residual damage left over from years before. I felt irrational fear come on instantly. I then quickly pushed it down again. I know this fear lives inside of me and probably will forever. I’m just trying to figure out a way to live with it. So I turned up my iPod and was shamefully reassured that I live in a world where I stand for more of a chance of being killed over it than I do by the hand of a terrorist.
(Why this time? The summit? The Olympics? Boredom? The war?)
Mihow 
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