25 Years Later

By Meaghan Morelli, Memoirist, writer, speaker. Forthcoming book, WATCH ME: A memoir of stalking and survival, available 2027.

One of the memories of that day that stays with me most is the “MISSING” photo flyers.

They appeared quickly, these hastily crafted sheets of paper with photos of smiling men and women, some with their children or dogs. Homemade paper flares sent up by terrified families searching for some news of their loved ones amid a day where confusion and horror rained down on everything.

They were put up almost immediately; and in the days that followed, their numbers grew exponentially. Soon, they were taped or stapled to nearly every surface you passed: mailboxes, phone booths, the sides of buildings, subway walls. They were absolutely everywhere. They hung silently, following you everywhere. Like ghosts.

I was living in Manhattan then, with my fiancé at the time.

When the memories come back now, which they still do, and more so now on the eve of a devastating 25^th anniversary, they don’t come back fully stitched together in any kind of a clean, linear form. Memory is strange that way, especially trauma memory.

What remains intact amidst the replaying staccato flashes of what we saw, heard, and smelled, is a fully realized, visceral sensation of almost unspeakable fear and sorrow. Our minds sometimes chop up the memories, some say in an effort to protect ourselves from fully reexperiencing horrors. But the sensations and memories live in our bodies for many years in ways that are more cohesive and consistent than the images in our minds.

My memories of that morning start around 8:45 a.m., one minute before the first plane hit. I was getting off the subway to head to my fiancé’s apartment, on East 33^rd St. I looked at my watch because I knew he was leaving just before 9:00 a.m. for a work meeting downtown. It was a very quick walk to his building. I would just make it.

When I surfaced above to the street, the first plane must have just hit moments before. Too early for me to realize what had literally just happened only a few subway stops further downtown.

And yes, it’s become such a cliché but, the sky really was that blue that morning.

Inside his apartment, we quickly said hello and then goodbye for the day. I had brought him a double espresso and he took it on his way out, giving me a quick kiss. I remember tossing an offhanded remark that I couldn’t wait to move uptown because his place was so loud that it “sounded like every siren in the city was going off.”

The whole interaction only took a minute or two.

Only moments later, he burst back into the apartment.

“There’s been an explosion or something at the World Trade Center!”

This is where the first bifurcation of my memories begins. The sensation I remember is confusion. Not panic. Not yet. Just confusion.

We turned on the television to find out more of what happened. That’s when we saw the second plane hit live on TV.

Another bifurcation in my memories now. Almost like a record skip. A tiny glitch.

In incomprehensible situations like this, it takes our brains a few moments to try to catch up, to try to make some kind of sense of what we are witnessing, experiencing. A sensation of time truly slowing down momentarily. But when realization sets in, time speeds up, as our brains try to catch up to what is happening.

This is how I remember it feeling, anyway.

We knew people down there, in those buildings. A lot of people. One of my best friends is down there.

That was the first layer of thought in our minds.

It is honestly almost impossible to describe the levels of confusion that set in.

“This isn’t an accident,” he said, echoing some of the commentary that was just beginning on the news.

But what did that mean? If it wasn’t an accident, were we…what? Under attack?

Glitch.

The next hour is fuzzy. Watching the news, trying frantically to call the people we knew who were there. Nothing went through. No calls. The feeling of helplessness was one of the most profound sensations I’ve ever experienced.

Reports of another plane that may have been hijacked. Then another. A plane crashed into the Pentagon. The Pentagon.

Confusion. Horror. Helplessness.

Until the South Tower fell.

Glitch.

I don’t actually believe that we as human beings have language to accurately impart how that moment felt. I certainly don’t.

Helplessness gave way to waves of panic.

Another plane down, now in a Pennsylvania field.

Glitch. Glitch. Glitch.

The sky was literally falling. That’s what I remember thinking. Were there more planes? Where were they? We were on the 33^rd floor of a Manhattan high rise. Looking at the UN through the window, the Empire State building just out of sight but only a couple of blocks away. Would we be hit? Would there be bombs in the streets below?

More futile attempts at phone calls. Crying. Wailing. And through it all, I remember trying to will the North Tower to stay standing. Like, physically, with my body, trying to will that tower into remaining in existence with every molecule in my body.

Do not fall down.

But then, the North Tower fell, too.

From a distance of 25 years, this is where the swirling of sensations—glitches—truly takes over and engulfs any kind of linear description of what happened over the next hours.

At some point, my fiancé left the apartment, briefly, to go outside, go to a bodega, get some “supplies.” And to see what was happening in the streets.

When he came back up, he said people were just in shock. And at the bottom of the island, just a couple miles away, an impossibly enormous smoke cloud billowed into that blue, blue sky.

The only supplies he returned with were a carton of orange juice, some bananas, a fifth of bourbon, and cigarettes. Our apocalypse supplies.

We kept trying, in vain, to reach someone—anyone—by phone.

At some time just after noon, we decided to walk and find a blood bank. That was something we could do. We could go donate blood, to help.

We found the closest blood bank and the line was truly around the block. They told us to go to another one, a little further up. So, we walked. There, we found the same scene. A line of distressed, confused, terrified New Yorkers waiting to help.

We walked to four separate blood banks that afternoon, making our way further uptown. At every location, we were told to return tomorrow. They had more people than they could accommodate, all of them there trying to help.

That takes my breath away, now. That sense of collective community in the midst of such horror.

Unsure of what to do next, and utterly exhausted, I just kind of collapsed onto the sidewalk, sobbing, outside an apartment building on Park Avenue. The tears weren’t for one thing, they were for everything. A feeling of the most profound loss.

A woman came out of the building, a resident. Older than I was. She might have been the age I am now. She ushered us into the lobby, asked the doorman to get me a bottle of water. And then she just hugged me, so tightly. She kept saying quietly to me, over and over, “I know. I know. I know.”

We sat there a few minutes in that lobby, just a few of us. But the only actual words I remember being spoken were, “I know.”

We took the long walk back to his apartment, this time facing the mountain of billowing smoke the entire way. A funeral pyre.

I know we eventually got into contact with some people that evening. Some were the day after. And some we never had the chance to speak to again.

Those first few days in the city after, my memories still skip around. Calls for evacuations because of a bomb threat at the Empire State Building, Grand Central. Winds shifting and the acrid smell of burning steel and plastic and human beings settled over the island. It was inescapable, even inside.

And when we went outside, those pictures. Everywhere. Smiling people juxtaposed against desperate pleas from loved ones. “MISSING. 27 years old. Last seen in the North Tower. Please call with any information.”

When I could sleep, I dreamt of walking on piles of dead bodies.

Those days were, by their very definition, a liminal space—haunted, haunting.

Unrecognizable. The Before certainly gone, but the After not yet fully realized.

I was able to eventually connect with my close friend, Kathleen. She had managed to evacuate just as the first tower came down. She and some work colleagues somehow got on a boat that took them to New Jersey, where her boss lived. After that, she came to stay with us at my fiancé’s apartment. She couldn’t stay at home. She lived below Houston Street.

When we were able to take her to her apartment to gather some things—probably on Thursday, the 13^th—there were military tanks lining Houston Street.

Incongruous. Impossible.

We had to enter through a check point, showing ID to prove she lived there, explaining we were returning to gather some of her things. With t-shirts tied over our faces to keep from breathing in too much smoke and dust, we walked through blocks of ash and devastation.

I remember falling asleep on her bed briefly while she showered in her own shower. She wanted to do that, I remember.

We made it back to the 33^rd Street apartment that night, after collecting another friend of hers who also lived below Houston Steet. We felt like a small band of refugees with absolutely no idea where to go or what to do next.

8:45 a.m. on the morning of September 11^th to me now felt like a different lifetime, an unbridgeable distance. An unrecoverable memory.

I’ve never written about this time in any kind of cohesive, longer form before now. It felt impossible to find words, to string together the disconnected sights and sounds and fears and nightmares—waking and sleeping—in a way that would make sense. And anyway, we didn’t even have it that bad. We all survived.

In October, my fiancé and I did move to a new apartment. He went back to work. And I threw myself into volunteer work at a rape crisis program, acting as an emergency room volunteer advocate on overnight, on-call shifts for victims of sexual assault and domestic violence. That’s a clear pivot I made in my life as a result of that day.

Before September 11^th, I had moved to New York City with dreams of becoming a successful, working actor. After September 11^th, I felt compelled to do something in service of the people in the city where I lived, the city I loved. I wanted to take care of people in their moment of crisis, the way that woman in the building on Park Avenue helped take care of me. If only momentarily, being there to bear witness, hold a hand, and say, “I know.”

Every anniversary, I watch a specific documentary, usually more than once. It’s the film shot by two French documentarians, the Naudet brothers. They had already just happened to be embedded with Ladder One downtown, just trying to make a film about what it was like to be a New York City firefighter. They had no way of knowing that they would be there, that day, inside the towers, documenting history.

With a distance of 25 years, some things fade. And some things stand out more clearly.

I watch the documentary because the immediate horror does fade. The sounds, the panic—it fades. And I don’t want to forget. I don’t want to live in it, but I do not want to forget it.

I think because remembering it makes what stands out most to me now the most important. Imperative, really.

What stands out to me the most now, the space I prefer to live in, is with the woman on Park Avenue who helped me, whose name I do not remember. I prefer to live in those blood bank lines with people who were just as scared and hurting as I was and still showed up to try to do whatever they could to help.

And our little band of refugees in that 33^rd Street apartment, trying to look after each other, even though we didn’t have any idea what to do next.

Showing up in emergency rooms in the months after, to try to help a stranger through one of the worst nights of her life.

All of these tiny candles—extended hands attempting to reach through the darkness and terror and confusion to offer comfort—that’s what stands out to me now. That’s where I want to live, where I want us to get to—collectively, together—again.

I think remembering—actually remembering—and sitting with the heartbreak and horror, that’s how we light candles for one another. That’s how we bridge what feels like an unbridgeable distance. That’s why sharing stories with one another is so important. It’s how we retain our humanity, through these connections.

Even when it feels so hard to find the words.