9/11 -- Seven years later

Seven years ago today I made what I consider to be my first adult decision. I was twenty years old and working as an unpaid intern in New York City. The decision I had to make was what to do after the towers came down -- stay in the office where I was working, which was close enough to the empire state building that if that turned out to be the next target I feared it would crumble right on top of us? Try to go uptown, maybe cross one of the bridges, and find a place to stay? Or go back to my apartment, which meant walking towards the smoke and the chaos, towards the gaping, fiery hole?

Of course I had made decisions before this one, and they had seemed big at the time. Which college should I go to? What major should I choose? Was it really a good idea to take my English degree and move all the way across the country for a part-time, unpaid internship with Soap Opera Digest while subletting an apartment I found online and accepted without seeing? The truth about those decisions and all the ones that came before was that they were reversible. I could make them and know that rescue would not be far behind should it be required. But no one could get me out of NY that day. And no one could go out on the streets and smell the smoke and see the tanks and the face masks and tell me what the right decision was.

Of course that was the other part that made it feel like an adult decision -- there was no correct decision. There wasn't a moral to the story that would reveal itself if I chose the option behind door number three; there was no moral highground to be gained from making an accurate decision based on the information available or for evaluating two roads and choosing the one less traveled. There wasn't a reward that came at the end like there often had been before -- not the relief of having chosen a college or the adventure that came with the move to NY. It was just a decision that had to be made and it had to be made by me alone.

I didn't lose anyone in the towers seven years ago. And whatever effect that day had on me was nothing compared to the people who had to make the worst decisions, the unimaginable ones, the ones I can't bring myself to think about even today -- whether to rush into the burning building, whether to burn, whether to jump -- decisions I will likely go my entire life without ever having to make.

And so today I am grateful for each and every decision I've had the privilege of making in the last seven years -- the good ones, the ones I can only hope to learn from, the ones I pretended to leave up to the universe, the ones that made me smile, the ones that now make me cringe, the ones that took me far away, the ones that brought me back, and the ones that brought me to where I am today.