#2 A Year in the Life of One Left Behind (memoir)
So unfortunately there’s really no way to make a memoir about mental health even remotely happy, so I’m not going to try. This is my story of the past year, welcome to it…
Freshmen year. I. Was. Terrified. Lucky for me I had been training all summer and had a wonderful group of cross county friends who helped me through it. The months went by I had meets, homework, and homecoming. It was sad when my first year of cross country ended but it was so much fun! Then my life changed in the most undesirable way.
On the morning of November 4th, 2017 I got the worst phone call of my life, I found out that a member of my cross country team had committed suicide. It was the hardest phone call I have ever gotten. There’s no possible way to describe the way it felt and the sadness it brought to my heart. For that whole day my team spent every moment possible just holding on to each other and crying. We knew nothing, we had no idea that he had felt depressed or that anything was going on. We were completely blind sided. The next week going to school was unbearable trying to focus, do homework, tests and keep my composure while the random memories and sadness flooded into my mind. All my teachers knew that my team was very close, they were all very sympathetic and kind. And for the first couple of days back to school, I was able to leave class and spend time with others grieving his loss. About a week after we found out, together as a team, the cross country members showed up to the memorial and funeral. Let me tell you, it’s definitely not how I wanted to spend my weekend. For the next about 4 months there was nothing on my mind but him, every memory and every regret, I thought about him more for the continuing months but another bomb shell hit my life. In the beginning of March, my team once again found out one of our team members had passed away, this time it was a medical issue but that made it no easier. Within 4 months my world had been turned upside down and flipped around. Once again everyone was kind and supportive but now grieving over two of my friends, I became a different person. It has been just over a year now since my first bomb shell hit and I’m finally back to almost the person I was before. There’s no way to go through what I have and come out the other side unchanged. Change is good and necessary, it’s about time for our society to do the same.
