Glad that one was just a dream

When D woke me up 20 minutes before my alarm this morning I was having my first 9/11 nightmare in a long time, if ever. I’m guessing it stemmed from all of the current publicity surrounding the 10 year anniversary of it that is approaching.

In my dream I was down in the subways under the World Trade Center as I was that morning, but this time I knew everything that was going to happen. It was like I was the only one who knew what the next few minutes held, so I was trying to get up and outside to where I had been that day. I kept warning people to get out of there and take cover, but no one paid me any attention. Just another crazy New Yorker running around. I finally wound my way around to the outer perimeter of the WTC, and watched, plain as day, the first plane crash right into the north tower. It was weird, though, because from my vantage point in the dream the towers were a fraction as tall as they really had been, so everything was magnified since it was so close to the ground. A piece of glass from the explosion fell into my eye.

After witnessing that first crash (i’m still in the dream here), I ran around to another side of the shortened tower, where I began seeing people jumping from the windows to get out. Thank god I never saw that in real life. I think it would have caused many, many more nightmares before now. But this morning I was frozen in place, watching people throw themselves out of the towers in droves; some peaceful-looking, resigned to their fate below, some screaming in sheer terror. I couldn’t believe it.

Then at the end of the dream I found myself over on the very lower eastern tip of Manhattan, where a huge tidal wave was crashing in to destroy that part of the city. I have no idea where that one came from, since there were no tidal waves occurring in NYC on 9/11. That would have been really unfair.

Whew. That was one of those dreams where you are just so thankful to be able to wake up and walk away from the shadows.