Just moved to Costa Rica
My Dad was killed a few weeks prior, and I had just moved to San Jose, Costa Rica with my ex-boyfriend to work in online poker. The ex and I had just moved into our own place and thought it would be great to live further from our office. We ended up living near the American Embassy.
In the morning, we heard all sorts of commotion, and saw that our neighbourhood was blockaded. There were black hawk helicopters flying around and men with machine guns, in random places. We hailed a taxi and headed off to work. I’m sure the driver was listening to the news on the radio, but we didn’t know enough Spanish to understand what was happening.
When we got to work, everyone was sitting around the TV, and no one was working. One of the girls who we worked with had just moved from New York and her boyfriend was working as a chef at a restaurant across the street from the Twin Towers, so she was glued to the TV. Everyone was in tears. As per usual, with disasters, there was a record number of people gambling on our system. Stress brings out the gambling in people with that tendency.
All our co-workers were Canadian, so it wasn’t our country under attack, but we felt the hollow feeling most must have felt as they absorbed the news. Like the Tsunami in Thailand, the earthquake in Japan, ongoing wars, struggles for freedom and equality the world over. Families, not even imagining that one morning their loved ones go to work, and the next day they are gone. What do you do the next day? Personally, as my Dad died in a particularly horrific way, I combined the two in my head and developed an interesting case of flight anxiety. I could not stay awake on an airplane. As soon as we rolled onto the tarmac I was asleep. It took about a year to get over.
I think America as a nation had a similar, understandable, ‘loss of control’ reaction, that it’s just getting over now. My wish on this September 11th, is that people don’t lump others into groups based on nationality, and persecute the innocent. Because that’s exactly what the terrorists did, and it made the world have a big sad lump in it’s throat.
