SHE SURVIVED

She was in the darkest place of her life, but she continued to push through every day. It was lonely and pitch black in her room for days upon days, weeks upon weeks, and months upon months. The clouds circled to create storms, and the rain kept pouring. It wasn’t hurricane season either, but it sure felt like it. If you walked into my room, you would’ve known where the tornado touched down.

After losing my dad, there was a hole in my heart that I kept trying to fill. I attempted to fill this void with alcohol, drugs, late nights, clubs, house parties, and anything else under the sun. My so-called friends didn’t even care how much I was damaging my life. They just sat back and judged me for the decisions I was making. My response was always, “Wouldn’t you make those same mistakes if you just spent your childhood taking care of an adult (that you’re essentially not responsible for), then proceeded to watch him die in a matter of seconds?”

It was in those final moments that I knew I had to go somewhere else. I didn’t know where, but I knew I couldn’t stay in Knoxville anymore. The place filled with people that I called home for 19 years of my life still feels like a strange town to this day. The people who said they would always be there, aren’t. There are times when I return home for the holidays, and you can still feel the drought. Most of those times, I return to my dad’s old house, and suddenly that drought doesn’t exist there.

At the time, I was confused between running away and moving on — but now I can look back and say I had to move on. So, I did.

I made the move to Orlando, Florida by the end of the summer in 2017. I thought I would never leave college football behind me, but I did. On August 8, 2017 to be exact. I started studying at Full Sail University shortly after, and boy — I met some amazing people, mentors, and friends along the way. I kept walking. I continued to wake up every day and move forward, but I knew I was leaving something behind me.

Honestly, this was one of the best yet worst times of my life. I knew my dad wasn’t going to call me again. I struggled with the fact that I would never hear his voice again. All I needed was that one phone call or a simple bear hug.

For years, I continued to reminisce about this one time he found me crying in my car (probably over a ridiculous biology exam or a stupid boy). He pulled me out, walked me into the house, and right before we went inside — he stopped to give me a massive hug in the garage. When I visit his old house, I find myself standing in that garage, and I can still feel that moment. I needed that. I still do.

Over the years in Florida, in college, and even for some years after — it felt like I was crying in my car all over again, and I needed him to pull me out. Five more minutes is what I constantly asked for. How would I graduate college without my dad? How do I take another test without one of his best pep talks? I kept putting one foot forward, but I didn’t know where it was leading me. It felt like I was a blind man walking, not knowing where he was going.

During my time at college, I stayed quiet. I struggled so deeply inside, yet nobody would’ve guessed that. There was a group activity our professor created where we would write down one word that explained each person. Once we were done writing down our words, we would place them in the correct person’s envelope. Nobody knew what was said about them until they opened their envelope. Once the exercise was over, everyone grabbed their envelope and opened it up. At the time, this class was huge, so I did not know a lot of people. You know one of those big lecture halls where you just walk in, find a seat, and hope to meet someone and become best friends with them? Yeah, that. But after the activity was over, it seemed like they knew me once I saw each of their responses.

With approximately 50+ words in my envelope, I only received one word. That word was: Strength.

I think I walked out of the classroom that day crying. How did these people think I was so strong, yet I was in one of the weakest seasons of my life? Was this the answer she was searching for?

As time continued on, my dreams started to change. Before my dad passed away, my dream job was to host my own political talk show. Megyn Kelly, Bill O’Reilly, Tucker Carlson, and Candace Owens have all been successful in this role. Those were the people I looked up to in the industry. I thought I knew exactly where my life was going.

But my life had already taught me that plans can change in a matter of seconds. The more time I spent at Full Sail, the more I started discovering other things I loved and other things I was good at. For the first time in years, I was creating a life that wasn’t centered around taking care of my dad.

It was just me. And honestly, I didn’t really know who me was yet. For so many years, I had been someone’s caregiver. Someone’s daughter. Someone who had to be strong. Someone who couldn’t stop because another person needed her. Now, nobody needed me to keep them alive. I just had to figure out how to keep myself alive. So, that’s what I did. I went to class. I made friends. I learned. I laughed again. I cried. I made mistakes. I stayed up way too late. I continued making straight A’s and chasing that #1 spot my dad had talked about for so many years. And eventually, I did it. By the time I graduated from Full Sail, I had a 4.0 GPA and was Valedictorian of my graduating class. I became exactly what my dad always wanted me to be. The #1 student. But accomplishing everything I had set out to accomplish didn’t magically make everything okay. That was something I didn’t understand yet.

During all of those years taking care of my dad, I learned how to survive almost anything. I learned how to function when I was terrified. I learned how to keep going when I was exhausted. I learned how to smile when something inside of me was falling apart. I learned how to show up when all I wanted to do was disappear. What I never learned was what to do when the fight was over.

For so long, survival was all I knew. And maybe that’s what everyone else saw when they looked at me and wrote Strength. They saw the girl who kept going, but what they didn’t see was everything it took for her to do it. For years, I thought being strong meant continuing to move forward. I thought if I kept accomplishing things, kept going to school, kept making straight A’s, kept laughing, kept meeting new people, and kept building a new life, eventually everything behind me would stay there. But it didn’t.

The little girl from the beginning of this story was still there. She was older now. She had moved hundreds of miles away. She had graduated college. She had accomplished something she knew would’ve made her dad proud. But she still didn’t have the answers she had been searching for. She wasn’t healed. Not yet.

But after everything she had been through — every hospital floor, every goodbye, every mistake, every dark room, every morning she didn’t want to get out of bed, and every step she took without knowing where it was leading her — she kept going.

Yet, she survived.