November 21, 2013 started just like any other day. I woke up, got ready, rushed to campus, sat through classes and went to work. It wasn’t until that night when my life was changed forever.
After work, I met up with my sister and a friend to go to dinner. I stopped by my sister’s house in Salt Lake City and when I first walked in, I noticed a terrible smell. I kept asking if she’d taken the trash out recently, or if we could light a candle. But we laughed it off—it didn’t seem like a big deal.
We went back to my sister’s house after dinner, and noticed a car sitting in the driveway. It was one of my sister’s roommate’s best friends. He got out of his car and shouted out to us, asking if we had seen his friend recently. My sister told him that her roommate had been home on Monday (it was now Thursday), but he had said he had plans to visit his parents, so they figured that’s where he was.
What the friend told us next was a game-changer. He said that his mom had called him and asked where he was because she hadn’t been able to get a hold of him for a couple of days. Immediately, we knew something was wrong, and we all jumped to the same conclusion: He had gone missing. His friend left, and we told him we would call if we heard anything.
My sister’s other roommate—her best friend—came home, and we told her everything that had happened. She called the friend and asked if he had talked to the mom yet and if we should call the police. He told her to hold on and he would call her right back. Her phone rang five minutes later—it was their roommate’s mom. She asked my sister and her roommate multiple questions about when they saw him last, what he told them the last time they saw him, and even about what he had received in the mail. Aside from the fact that he was missing, nothing else seemed out of the ordinary.
Finally, their roommate’s mom asked if his backpack was around and if we would check his room for it. I offered to check since I was the closest to his room, and I wanted to do what I could to help a worried mom who didn’t know where her son was. I got up, walked to his room, and opened the door. When I opened the door that terrible smell I first smelled when I walked into my sister’s house earlier hit me like a brick wall. He was a messy person though, so my first reaction was that it didn’t surprise me that his room stunk. There were empty beer cans, dirty dishes and clothes, newspapers, magazines, and more just thrown all over the floor. That’s just how he was. He was incredibly brilliant, but terrible at picking up after himself.
When I turned the light on and peeked in, all I saw was an empty bedroom with no backpack to be found. I switched the light off, and reached behind me to grab the door. My hand didn’t find the knob right away, so I turned around to look for it. As I grabbed it to pull it shut, I caught sight of him in the back corner of the closet behind the door, hanging three feet from my face.
I let out a bloodcurling scream—a sound I didn’t even know I was capable of making. It was a scream both my sister and her roommate say they will never forget. I ran out of the room and when I got back to the living room, my sister and her roommate were already running out of the house. I followed and when I got outside I collapsed on the front lawn. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t talk. I was frozen.
All I could think to myself was, “This is dream! Wake up!” Well, I wasn’t dreaming. I remember hearing my sister’s roommate on the phone with their other roommate’s mom, wailing, “He’s dead! He hung himself!” His mother ended the call.
The police were called, our statements were taken and we were made to sit outside and wait because the house was considered a crime scene. Finally, they let us go so we didn’t have to see the body come out in the body bag. We went back to my place, where the three of us huddled into my bed and laid there the rest of the night, not sleeping. Both my sister and her roommate ended up moving in with me and we slept three to a bed for the next three months. I wouldn’t have had it any other way.
For the longest time, I hated talking about that night. It was a nightmare I’ll never forget—what I saw that night is something I would never wish upon anybody. It left me scared of the dark, scared of being alone, and scared of the root of both of those issues: the unknown. I didn’t like to be around people other than my sister and her roommate, because all anyone ever did was ask if I was okay. It drove me crazy because while I was always saying, “I’m fine,” I really wanted to yell, “No, I’m not fine. Would you be fine? Would you be able to stop replaying that image in your head over and over again?” My sister, her roommate and my parents (who unfortunately live across the country) were the only people I felt that I could talk to.
I finally realized that I wasn’t myself anymore. I never laughed, and I was missing out on my life and memories with my friends. I called my mom and told her, “I need help. I need to talk to someone.” This was a big step for me because I had kind of rejected the idea of therapy earlier on. After all, until this happened, I had always been good at voicing my feelings and handling things on my own. The reason I never wanted to talk about it was because I didn’t want anyone to know about what I saw. I didn’t want it to haunt them as well.
When I started opening up, I realized this was exactly what I needed to help me get past what I was feeling. A year later, I still think about that night every day, but now, it’s at least in the back of my mine.
I also started taking advantage of new opportunities. I recently found out I was officially one of the new Campus Correspondents for Her Campus Utah at the University of Utah, which made me so excited.
Becoming a part of Her Campus changed my life. It allowed me to focus on the future and not dwell on my past. It gave me something to look forward to every morning when I got up. Becoming a Campus Correspondent meant I had to constantly be thinking of new ideas, and with these running through my head, I didn’t have time to think about that night throughout the day, every day. My life was finally coming back together. I was moving on and loving where my life was going.
Of course there are still triggers that bring me right back to that night, but I am stronger now than I have ever been before. I wish he was still here and I wish what happened was just a dream, but that night, he taught me that life is short. I learned not to take my life for granted and to only spend time on the things that make me happy. So for that I thank him and say, “Rest in peace and paradise. We all hope you are exactly where you belong.”