Not Your Ordinary 9-11 Post

I can still remember that room - it was so small that it can barely fit in the two double deckers and four guys. But I lived there. I shared the room with a security guard, an unemployed deaf mute and a construction worker. And I, I was a kid. I was kid who was just fresh out of college. I had recently gotten myself a research job in a government project that was based in QC and since I did not have relatives in the metro, I lived close to a college friend's house in Mandaluyong.

I can still remember that day - it was September 11, 2001. My room in Manda was barely lit at around 9 in the evening and I had just come home from the mall where I had dinner by myself. I was lying in bed and I was thinking about the future - where my bunk bed life would take me years later - when my then "ultra low end" phone beeped. I opened the message and I was shocked, well I think I was. It read:

" A plane crashed into one of the twin towers in NY. Terrorist attack."

It was news. No wait, it was really big news. I barely had an idea how things would change after that night. I never expected that airport security would be tighter. I had never even been on a plane by that time so I was clueless. I had no idea that this would change the world - its economy, its outlook, and its people. I received several messages on the same topic after that and I found myself praying. I remember praying for the people who died that day. I remember also praying for, yes, world peace. But more importantly, I recall praying for myself.

Who wouldn't? I was twenty one. I had just gotten myself a job. I had a family that needed to be brought out of the shit we were all in. I had no money. I barely had credits in my phone to call and check what had happened. I was so dirt poor that I did not even have a TV in my room to watch the news in - not even a radio for crying out loud! I was still trying to figure out where my life was going and then this?

I can still remember that day - it was September 11, 2001. I had no idea that 9-11, as it would later be referred to, would change me. On my bed, in a small dark room, on 9-11, I firmed up all my plans for the future - where I am going to be in 10 years time and how I would get there the soonest. It was the day when I took hold of my life and said to myself that I will no longer be in that shit ever again. It was the day when I refused to be poor any longer.

For many people, 9-11 was a story of grief and sadness.

For me, it was the day I changed my life.


Blogger's Note: Eight years later, I found myself sleeping in a comfortable bed in a very big room, far from the small room that I lived in when I was twenty one. I am also in the place where 9-11 is more than just date. I guess I did well.