I’m disabled, mental illness to be exact, depression, ptsd, and a myriad of anxiety conditions. On the morning of 9.11 I was still in bed, my husband was getting ready to go to the lab (he’s a micro-biologist) and on the day before and the weekend before that my other two kids had come down with a minor cold and one of them missed school Friday the other Monday. On 9.11 it was my youngest’s turn (age 9) with the virus. She was on the opened up futon in the living room, flipping through channels, looking for toons and ALL the channels had it on so she listened for awhile till she understood what was going on then went to tell my husband, who checked it out and then told me. By the time he woke me up the 1st tower had fallen and we were just hearing about the pentagon.

My husband went into the lab and was supriesed that there was really nobody there that day. My daughter and I watched the news reports till the other two kids came home. Later that night we noticed the freakiest sunset you’ve ever seen. It was all different shades of purple, and too dark, it didn’t look real, looked like those old movie down with the special film like in “Wizard of Oz” I figure that some of the smoke and debris must have whaffed from NYC to Central CT were we live. To this day, the daughter who was home with me that day has a much more concrete understanding of what happened, than do my other two children who were shellered quite a bit by their school teachers. I don’t know which is better to KNOW or to be sheltered.

A few weeks after the attacks I ended up back on the psych ward for my depression for a few day, and then into day treatment, just about everyone there was affected in some way by the attacks, up to one patient who lost a family member. Me, I got more flashbacks, more anxiety attacks, and both were more intense, also my depression became more intractable. I became more self destructive for awhile. On a lighter note a few months after the attacks we adopted a mini dachshund puppy, who was born September 11, 2001, when he came to us he was named Barkley (a rather undistinguished name) After much debate we named him New York City and we call him Yorkie for short.