Word Count:299
As I looked ahead at the climb I was going to attempt, my knees started to shake and my palms got all clammy. I knew at this point there was no turning back because my whole family was on board. The number that kept running through my head was 354, which was the amount of stairs I was about to climb. The very moment I heard that number my heart stopped beating. The first few flights weren’t that bad, but soon enough my legs started to ache. Somewhere around step 150, I had to stop to catch my breath and thought about turning back around. My younger cousins and my sister were all complaining. We thought this climb could not get any worse, but we were wrong. The stairs got very narrow and started to spiral. The higher up we got, they also got a lot closer together.
Finally, the stairs had come to an end. We actually made it to the top. My heart was pumping, I didn’t know if it was from the climb or my nerves. As I looked out the window I could see it, the whole New York City skyline. I could feel the whole tower swaying and at that moment I lost all excitement about the view. I began to have an anxiety attack and insist that my family start walking back down the stairs.
A few years later, that same skyline looked a lot different. After 9/11, I tried to remember what that skyline looked like the day I saw it from the crown of the Statue of Liberty, but I couldn’t. All I could remember was how awful the stairs were and how I couldn’t wait to go back down. I wish now, that I would have looked a little longer.
People take for granted a lot of things they have, and don’t really know what they have until they don’t have it any more.
