I came home from work Monday night the same as usual. Watched TV, played on the computer. Finally went to bed. Couldn't sleep. I layed in bed with the usual anxieties of the day. Money worries. Job worries. Life worries. Finally after sleeping very little about 9am I got out of bed and turned the TV on planning on smoking a cigarette and going back to bed. The pictures I saw would forever change my life!!!

At first there was unbelief. This is the USA!! Things like this don't happen here. The pictures had to be from the Middle East. But I've been to New York. Those buildings were not in the Middle East. My first thought was my sister who travels extensively for her job from Los Angeles to New York and Washington DC. I knew she wasn't traveling this week, but I still wanted to know for sure. I called. My next call was to my parents. Although I see them often, I just needed to hear their voices. I watched the TV numbly even though I didn't want to. Suddenly, all the anxieties that had kept me awake the night before didn't matter.

But life went on. I went through my week not really being able to deal with the whole tragedy. People at work were calling off sick and I had to cover. At first I was angry that I had to work so much that I was not able to keep up on what was going on. In hindsight maybe that was not a bad thing because I needed to go on with some sort of normalcy. Friday night at work we all went out with candles and had 3 minutes of silence. I lost it. The weeks' worth of numbness had finally worn off. The anxiety of the week had finally worn through.

How dare they? How dare they come into MY country and turn lives upside down? How dare they make us not feel safe in our own country? How dare they cowardly kill innocent people? How dare they?