I am really surprised I haven’t read anything (ever) in the news about this. But I’ve just finally come to a big realization: the September 11th attacks really had a devastating effect on the lives of New Yorkers—and I’m talking Post Traumatic Stress Disorder level effects.
In the last six years I’ve met a number of people, and I love talking to people about their careers, their lives, etc. I was talking to a guy this last weekend, just some new acquaintance that I made, and I was hearing a story about his career—about how he was working a high-paid corporate job and soon after 9/11 he left the job, became a freelancer, and his entire career after that just seemed to drift about with no direction. Now he’s trying to get back into the corporate workplace, but after being away so long, and after sort of “losing his nerve” he doesn’t think he could interview back into a similar (Vice President) position.
I suddenly realized just how many New Yorkers’ stories are exactly like this. I’ve talked to people whose relationships got “on the rocks” and fizzled out, people who started getting into serious drug (meth) problems, people who quit or lost their jobs, people who are right now in the process of filing for bankruptcy.
Now I wouldn’t claim that New Yorkers have a monopoly on tough times, but it just really hit me yesterday just how many New Yorkers tell this same sort of story, and how the (downward) turning point in every single story was September 2001. (And Hell, I sold my home and left NYC for L.A. less than a year later myself.) I wonder if there have been any studies about the rates of psychological problems or therapy patients or whatever comparing New York City circa 2001 to the rest of the country.
It also gives me a bit more compassion for people who have lived through disasters like people from New Orleans, to say nothing of people trying to survive in Iraq or Sudan.