The night before everything broke

Twenty-three years ago tonight, on September 10, 2001, 246 people went to bed—maybe a little earlier than usual—because they had flights to catch the next morning.

Thousands of others followed their everyday routines: They brushed their teeth, turned off the lights, maybe sipped on a cup of tea, and nestled into their familiar spots in bed, the ones molded perfectly by habit and time. Some were preparing for their shifts at Windows on the World, some for a client breakfast, others for their jobs cleaning the floors at the World Trade Center.

343 firefighters from the FDNY, 60 NYPD officers, and 8 paramedics set their alarms for an early morning, gearing up for another day on the front lines. No one knew that those mundane moments—so ordinary, so easy to overlook—would be their last. It was a night just like any other, until the morning changed everything.

Parents kissed their kids goodnight. Girlfriends called their boyfriends to make plans for the weekend. Friends laughed over drinks, making dinner reservations for places they’d been meaning to try. Colleagues finished up late-night emails, ready to tackle the next day’s deadlines. Strangers passed each other on the street, sharing nothing more than a glance, unaware their lives would be intertwined forever in history. People set alarms, tucked themselves into bed, and thought about the little things—what to wear, what to eat, what tomorrow would bring—never imagining that tomorrow, everything would change.

The next morning, everything broke , and for those of us who lived through it, we were forever marked by the shock of how fast the world could never be the same.

I never thought about it this way until we lived through October 7.

I always knew what happened on September 11 was devastating, but I never truly understood the weight of that quiet before the storm, the way lives carried on in ordinary ways, right before everything was torn apart. I can picture those moments so clearly now—parents kissing their kids goodnight, people laughing, making plans, dancing at a rave, lighting candles for Shabbat and Chag, setting alarms, completely unaware that the world as they knew it was about to be erased.

But October 7 made that feeling real for me.

I think back to the night before, October 6, and I can’t even remember who I was then. I know I went to bed that night as someone, but she feels like a ghost now, someone I’ll never even meet again — let alone recognize even if I did.

It’s strange to think how one single morning can change you so deeply, so profoundly that you can’t even recognize yourself from the night before.

September 10, October 6—two nights that were just like any other, until they weren’t. And now, when I look back, all I can think is how none of us ever saw it coming, how none of us could have known just how fundamentally we would change by the time the sun rose again.