I moved to New York City in August 2001 for art school. I had just turned eighteen. We arrived at dawn, and right before we entered the tunnel, the Twin Towers peeked out in silhouette. The sight of them left a lump in my throat. It was the most exciting day of my life.

My apartment was on 13th Street at 6th Avenue. I’m from the South, so while I was still learning my way around the city, I knew I was headed north when I walked toward the Empire State Building and south when I walked toward the World Trade Center. The blinking light atop the North Tower’s antenna was always a comforting sight. Like a star guiding me home in this new and dizzying place.

Less than a month later, in my second week of painting class, a fellow student rushed in and said that a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center. Everyone assumed it was an accident until we learned about the second plane. My mind started racing. I had registered with the Selective Service only two months earlier. Would we go to war? Would I be drafted?

My professor left the studio and never returned. We assumed class was dismissed and wandered onto the streets in a daze.

The sidewalks were lined with people frozen in place. Nobody could believe what they were seeing.

Our cellphones were useless. No one could get a call through.

I knew my mom would be hysterical. In fact, my parents had just stayed at the WTC Marriott three weeks before to attend my college’s welcome events. That hotel was now rubble.

I started walking home. I headed south, but I was no longer walking toward the World Trade Center. I was walking toward the most ominous dark cloud of smoke I had ever seen. It blanketed lower Manhattan and drifted for miles into the sky.

Once I got to my apartment, I managed to reach some friends back home via AOL Instant Messenger to let them know I was okay. They relayed the news to my parents, who thanked God their prayers for my safety had been answered.

My apartment was in the restricted area, so no traffic other than emergency vehicles was allowed. Between the sirens, there were moments of eerie stillness. After a few days spent glued to the news in my tiny bedroom, I took the subway to Canal Street and walked as close to Ground Zero as civilians were allowed. I zoomed in with my digital camera and snapped some photos. I saw mangled metal. I saw dust-covered buildings. I saw the scale of the disaster, and it was more than I could comprehend. I haven’t looked at those photos since.

I live in Los Angeles now. Twenty-five years later, three memories of that time remain especially vivid.

I’ll never forget the smell of the fires. It was an acrid and chemical smell you just knew was poisonous. It hung in the air for weeks. It reminded me that men and women were down there every day in the very thick of it, searching for survivors. Every fire season here in California, the smell brings me back to that time.

Second, I’ll never forget the flyers. Everywhere you went, thousands of “Missing Person” flyers were tacked to walls and signposts on every corner of every block. The Xeroxed faces ripped my heart out. Because I, like everyone else who saw them, knew these people would never be found. There would be a handful of miracle survival stories, but for the rest of the families, their only miracle would be to recover even a fragment of their loved ones’ remains. Something they could put into a coffin.

Finally, what I choose to remember most about that day is how close the city became. New Yorkers are notoriously impatient with one another. But for a while at least, after the attacks, we were one. People lined up to give blood that was tragically not needed. American flags were sold out at every bodega because they were already hanging from stoops and windows. We checked in with one another. We were considerate. We were kind.

I was so proud to be a New Yorker. I was even more proud to be an American. That feeling has never left me. Whenever I see how bitterly divided our nation has become, I try to remember that time. And I hope we don’t have to endure another terrible tragedy to find our way back.