I never wrote about what happened five years ago.

Maybe because I thought what happened to me in the wake of everything else wasn't important. Maybe because I don't want to think about how differently my life, and the lives of so many, might have turned out if that day had been the day I, we, expected. Maybe because out of all the things I've lived through in my life, carrying a knife in my purse to visit my father, emergency surgeries, even moving to New York, that day continues to frighten me. Maybe I still can't believe that I survived it.

Maybe I didn't.

I laughed when the ads for hotlines aired. Hotlines to help New Yorkers cope. Not that I scoffed at the idea of needing help, but rather that all we needed was an anonymous voice at the end of a phone and we would overcome. They might as well have been trying to empty the Atlantic with a teaspoon.

And yet.

Now I am going to tell the story.

I'm not a morning person and so the events preceding what happened are at best fuzzy. I wasn't clear about the times things actually happened and the only other person who was with me, Eric Kinsman, abandoned me so quickly afterwards and has made his ignornace of me so absolute, there is no way to verify my memory of the events.

It was supposed to be my second day teaching. That's why I woke up early. Eric didn't have class until much later in the day, but he was a good boyfriend at the time and got up early with me to take the train downtown. He knew I was nervous.

No, scared.

So scared about being a failure at teaching that I decided to go into my office two hours early. I had already written up my lesson plan, but I need to use the printer in my office, mine was broken. I also wanted to go into the room early and make sure the chairs were arranged properly around the table. And rehearse my class plan a little. Get use to talking at the front of the room.

I didn't have a television at the time, and we didn't listen to the radio. We woke and busied ourselves about getting ready. Did we shower together that morning? We often did, but I can't remember if we did that day. I hope we did. It would have been the last time. We had breakfast-toasted cinnamon waffles-a personal favorite-with no syrup. And tea, of course, two cups for me.

We walked half awake to the train station. As early as I was going to be, I wanted to rush. Thought two hours wasn't nearly enough time for me to prepare for my class ,and I wanted everything to be perfect. I had to be sure of everything so I could be confident when I went into class.

The trains ran normally and so it wasn't until we got out of the 6 at Astor Place that we knew anything was wrong. Eric noticed the billows of smoke. "What the hell is that?" he asked me as he pointed out the smoke.

"Something is probably on fire," I retorted. I didn't have time for this. I wanted to go to my office and get ready, not ponder the causes of smoke in a city. "Are you going back to your place?"

"No, I'll come with you. I want to see what this is about." So we started to walk towards my office. It wasn't until we were on Waverly that we both saw it.

What I couldn't understand was how both towers could be on fire. Surely the fire couldn't leap from one building to the next. How could they both be burning?

We stood there. I noticed people on their cellphones. Who were they calling? Still, as horrible as it was, I pushed on. NYU wouldn't cancel class for a fire, even if it was in both of the towers.

We were walking towards 4th street hand in hand and when we saw the first tower fall. I don't remember there being any sound, although there must have been. I remember there being a surge in the people around us, all of us running instinctively forward. As if a few more steps and we could hold it up.

How oddly light it looked, not like a building disintegrating, but like tissue paper and glitter falling to the floor, like some art project from 6th grade, not something solid.

Eric squuezed my hand. "I'm sure they got everyone out," he said to me. And I thought of Latin teacher, Mrs. Hightower and how she told us about the destruction of Pompeii-how people stayed believing that the ash would mysteriously vanish as quickly as it appeared. And I knew that 2000 years hadn't changed human nature. People would have stayed. But we didn't know then.

On West Fourth, some guy had put a radio on top of his car and was blaring the news. People were gathered around it. I saw Rabid standing there stone faced. I waved as Eric pulled me towards my office. He wanted to use my phone to call his mother, to tell her we were OK.

"Will you come with me to Cananda?" he asked. Not joking. He was afraid of a war, knew he couldn't be a solider although his father had spent most of his life in the military.

"Yes," I said. And I meant it. I would have gotten on the train then and never looked back. Given up my first teaching position because he was a coward.

Upstairs Doris was trying to deal with the phones. "You don't have to stay," she said, "but we'd like you to. In case students show up." I went to my office. Of course, we couldn't use the phone, but I sent my mother an email. Eric decided to go back to his dorm to try and call his mother.

He left me in my office.

Now I can admit that I was scared and angry. I was worried about looting and riots and he was leaving me to fend for myself to call his mother. I should have said something like no or take me with you.

But I stayed in case students showed up.

And then the second tower fell and I knew no students were going to come today. Another professor, a friend of mine from graduate school, Tymaine came in. He was worried about getting word to his wife that he was OK. He had to get home as soon as possible. Even if it meant walking all the way there. Another friend, one of the computer lab monitors, Nick, suggested we get something to eat. We went to the McDonald's across the street and ate talking about video games and movies and tried not to think about what was going on outside.

Afterwards, Nick decided to find his girlfriend while Tymaine and I walked up to the Union Square subway station. The subways were closed, but the police assured us that the lines would open again soon. We went to Eric's place and buzzed, but no one was there. Later I would find out that he was trying to donate blood. After a long wait, he had been turned away. They didn't need him.

Tymaine and I walked around the park a few times. We began to see people in the street covered in fine layers of ash. Some of them, it was just on their shoes. They had dusted themselves off as they walked uptown. Finally we got onto the N train. The train kept stopping for long periods between stations, and I was terrified. We all were.

At 59th street, I said good-bye to Tymaine. Wished him luck and decided to risk taking the bus the rest of the way home. The subway made me too nervous. The bus was packed. A black woman was crying out how we should all be thankful we were alive, we should thank God and Jesus we were alive.

I was glad when she got off the bus.

At 85th, I got off and began to walk to my apartment. People were having lunch at Panorama like it was a normal day. I went home and turned on the radio. I got online. My mother had sent me a return email. "If you need me to come get you, just tell me" as if the army would respect her trying to save her only child.

Again.

I stayed on Metafilter and kept the radio on to find out what was going on. My phone rang later that night, it was Eric's mother. I told her that we were both OK although seperated. I can't remember what else I said. I still couldn't dial out. Later I would find out that Duke Nukem called my mother twice to find out if I was OK even though I hadn't spoken to him in almost two years. She assured him I was fine. I posted my name and Eric's on several survivor lists going around. I got an email from Eric telling me not to be scared, that I wasn't alone as long as he loved me, he was with me. He was downtown with other people. He said he would walk up to be with me if I really wanted him to come, but then it was clear he wanted me to turn him down.

So I did.

I could handle being alone, after all I had made it uptown by myself.

I don't know how I fell asleep that night, but I know that I did. The next day Eric phoned, but still he didn't come uptown. I sat on the front stoop and blew bubbles. A couple came out and sniffed the air, "Why does it smell funny?" the guys asked the girl. She shook her head. How could they not know. "It's the ash from the towers. The debris. It's still in the air." They looked at me. I stayed there in the sun until my Israeli neighbor told me it wasn't safe. I should be inside. As if anything could be safe. How could we believe in the illusion of safety again? Not knowing then that it would soon be a national obsession. That we would eventually declare war on an abstract noun.

And the day after that Eric also stayed downtown. I tried to do the right thing, give him his space. My friends told me not to take it personally. He was in shock. He needed to work through things. What about my needs? Well, I was the stronger one. I was going through this alone and he apparently needed to be with his college age friends-to sit in dorm rooms and drink beer. And so I swallowed my rage at being abandoned, at being left on my own, and tried not to admit how terrified I was of going back to work. How relieved I was when NYU announced that classes would not resume until the following week.

Finally when we could leave the city, he came with me to Upstate. He seemed like his old self with me then. But I kept thinking about how you never know the last time you'll make love to someone. I told myself it was because of all those people who lost wives and husbands, fiancees, even adulterous lovers. But it was that somewhere I already knew.

When I came back to the city, the subways stops were papered with homemade signs and posters-the names and pictures of so many.

I met some of those people, the ones left behind, in bars. One of them lost what he said was the love of his life. He started smoking and drinking so that he could die, so that he could be with her. The other day I saw him on the sidewalk with his new fiancee-happily holding her hand. "Can't you be happy for them?" a friend of mine asked.

I was at a party with one of my friends from college two weeks afterward. There were fresh peach Bellinis, and the party was dead so I drank too much. The next day when Eric came, finally, I was still sleeping it off. I saw him and greeted him and then went back to sleep. When I woke up he had a box of stuff. "I'm leaving" he said.

"When are you coming back?" I asked.

Silence.

I sat up. He handed me a letter.

One page.

It began, "I no longer deserve the love you so freely give me."

I don't remember what else it said, but I do know that it didn't say I love you in it. He couldn't even give me that. I was the first great love of his life. How many has he had now?

He told me that everything would OK. As he always did. As it always has been for him. As I'm sure he would like to believe it is for others.

He needed his freedom. He wanted to date other girls. He wanted to be young.

I wasn't enough. Not anymore.

I had predicted this two years earlier, I just didn't think he would do it now. In the wake of the one of the greatest American tragedies. Wasn't it uspposed to bring us closer together? To make us realize how special we were to each other? But he decided that much like this country, I wasn't worth fighting for either.

And I, who had been an agnostic, stopped believing in God. When school resumed, one of my students wanted to write an argumentative paper that was God was still benevolent in the wake of 9-11.

And I who had been so scared of dying, was now scared of something else.

Living in this world-this new lonely cold cowardly world.

I should have known had it would all turn out then. Should have dropped Eric when he left me to call his mother. Should have quit teaching and not, as I did, struggle with nearly crippling anxiety going to work everyday.

I am descended from German Jews who escaped the Holocaust. We know how to survive. As I have. As so many of us did.

But we also know how to remember.