PORTLAND – Josh Messier’s first job out of college took him to the heart of the financial world, to the 38th floor of World Trade Center One in New York where he was an information technology analyst for Lehman Bros.

He went out late at night, had an apartment across the river in New Jersey, and lived the fun and exciting life of a young New Yorker. Now all he wants to do is hug his parents and sleep in his childhood room filled with football and hockey trophies and other remnants from his teen-age years.

“It’s comforting. It helps you not think of what happened,” Messier said Tuesday night from his parents’ Portland home.

Witnessing the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, Messier, 23, said he has lived through more than his share of tragedy and learned a rare lesson at his age about the importance and fragility of life.

“You can’t take anything or anyone for granted because they can be gone like that in a heartbeat,” he said.

The Deering High School and Syracuse University graduate was in his office when the first plane hit the 110-story building on Sept. 11.

“For about 45 seconds the whole building shook, and I was looking up and thinking the ceiling was going to cave in on us, or the floor was going to fall out from under us,” he said. “We all just stood there looking at each other and no one said a word.”

He said he now thinks it’s a blessing he and his co-workers were unaware of what had happened as it allowed people to evacuate in an orderly fashion. He thought maybe it was a rare earthquake and an electrical transformer had blown, causing a smoky fire.

It took him an hour to get out, and it wasn’t until he saw burn victims being carried down the stairs and he saw the dark building lobby, filled with water and electrical lines, that he knew something really bad had happened.

“We stepped outside and that’s when we saw the two enormous fiery holes,” he said. “I was in shock. Emergency crews threw us across the street and told us to get as far north as we could.”

Messier, covered in soot and dust, was two blocks away when the first tower collapsed. Then he just ran.

“For me that was the hardest thing to deal with. Until then you think the firefighters will put the fire out and we’ll be back at work in a few days. But there were people hanging out the windows and jumping like rag dolls and the building was gone.”

He thinks of all those who didn’t make it: the firefighters who were climbing the stairs to help people as he was going down and the emergency workers directing traffic below. And the one person in his office who is still missing.

“It’s your worst nightmare, is what it is,” he said.

He said he hasn’t stopped hugging his parents since he got home. When he first saw them on Saturday, he hugged them tightly and they all sobbed, first thinking of what could have happened to him and then thinking of the overall tragedy for the country and the victims.

“We’re having this reunion, but there are thousands of families that aren’t,” he said.

He has taken solace in being at home and being in Maine, but he is looking forward to getting back to work eventually once Lehman Bros. finds new office space. “The sooner we can get back to work and be as normal as we can the less we’ll dwell on it.

“But none of us will ever forget,” he said. “I’ve seen enough for 23.”