Rest in Peace

One of my students was brutally murdered this year. This is my letter to him.

Dearest Christopher,

It's taken me a while to be able to express the words that I wanted to share with you since February.

Your death came as a complete surprise, as you were a good student. 

Maybe because I didn’t think good students get murdered, especially not the way you were. 

Maybe it was so shocking because it shook up my preconceived notions.

I reacted worse to your death than I ever thought I would to a non-family member.  You were a student, yes, someone I knew fairly well and someone whom I nurtured for nearly four years. 

I guess I didn't realize the emotional connection that I do have to my students, and their lives, and the situations they come out of - or don't.

I guess I was surprised that, upon hearing of your shooting murder, it felt like a large boulder of pain had dropped on the center of my chest. Why did I break down sobbing uncontrollably, first in my car and then at my desk, unable to even form the horrific words to tell my husband on the phone what happened to you?

Why did I feel compelled to craft a passionate and somber letter to our city’s mayor, calling on him to find your killer and fight the increasing violence in our city? 

Why did I spend weeks kicking myself for not properly thanking you when, on the day before you were shot during a basketball game, you were the only student to show up and help me set up at our annual conference? 

And kicking myself some more for not sitting down with you more often, just talking, digging deeper, mentoring, and helping you? For being so busy with so many work tasks and the undulation of daily life that I missed something so big – this is the worst part of all –  that I didn’t even know you were possibly mixed up in something or someone bad? 

Why do I find myself so close to tears when writing this even now, nine months later? Why did I solicit money for your family, read your journal over and over, lead students to plan an anti-violence walk in your name and pack up all your items to send to your family?  Why did I struggle so hard to comfort other grieving students, because I was grieving so much myself?

What, pray tell, do you tell a teenager who is crying because their best friend was shot in the head several times for no reason, anyway? What kinds of cliche words could have possibly made them feel any better, or safer?

But enough of the why's. Your loss was huge for me. It still is. The fact is, I think of you often. Sometimes I can shake it, and push your face out of my mind. 

But you were my student, and I do take some responsibility for your life. You were violently killed for no apparent reason in the city I grew up in. And the city has moved on.

Your killer is still at large. 

I can’t believe this sick person still walks among us, maybe at the mall, at the grocery store, or maybe he is even one of those teenage boys that stare in the car next to me at stoplights.

Some days I dwell. I fear this unknown person. I wonder what he looks like.

I wonder what could have been of your young life.

I recall all the questions you had about college. How on track you were with your applications. How you and your mom stayed late and re-filled the financial aid form with me, twice, after the computer froze on you. So you’d have the money to go to college.

I wonder how your freshman year would be going. I wonder how you would have changed, blossomed, and matured -- as kids in poverty often do when they leave this town. 

I picture you a young man away from the darkness of this city and his pieced-together family, a young man turning into a burgeoning, educated person, surrounded by different college-minded friends with bright futures.

I think about how close you were (two months shy of graduation) to this reality.

But instead of walking across the graduation stage, you landed violently into a coffin.

Instead many people walked against violence in your name this summer under a hot sun, standing in the park you were killed in. Then they went home and moved on. 

Instead your face sits soul-less staring out from a t-shirt (red, the color of the pavement beneath your head when they found you) folded in the bottom of my dark dresser drawer. A t-shirt I have no reason to ever wear again.

Instead your killer gets to have a life. 

He gets the freedom to continue a violent life and kill, again, and again …. and again. 

Do you know who your killer is, Chris? Can you tell us please?

See, the thing is, he freely roams in my city where my other students roam, where my family and my friends and my nieces roam. He has ample opportunity to take away more young lives.

I often see our mayor at the gym, energetic, stretching after a run. The one with the goofy smile who went to private school his whole life and graduated from Harvard. The same mayor who never responded to my letter about you.

Sometimes I want to walk up to him and start screaming. 

I want to ask him: Why is our police force so inadequate that a teenager(s) can get away with murder in broad daylight in a park? Or, do the powers that be just not care about deaths like his on that side of town?

That is the real question.

That is the question that haunts me. Does it haunt you, Chris?

I think of my faith, and it’s perseverance in the face of some of the traumatic things I’ve been through the past few years. I know the taste of setbacks and hurt and disappointment. I know our lives don't always go as we would hope. I want to believe that God had a plan for you and that plan just couldn’t play out here on earth. 

And although I try to warn my students of the dangers of the world, I know I can’t prevent it all. I know I can’t save everyone. I know it's not up to me. All of our lives ebb and flow -- we are but stones tossed into the unpredicting swell of the river that is life. I do believe we all have a predetermined ending. I am not afraid of death itself. 

But what I don’t get is the capability of random hatred and violence in human beings. It’s something I struggle with.

Your death made me feel something different that I haven’t felt before. Your death made me want to change something. Your death shook up some of my ideas of “home.”

It made me want to rise up and fight something. 

Chris, your death has left a knot as blood red and angry as your t-shirt, down deep in my being.

Do you feel this too? Or are you at peace now?

Your memory made me remember the importance of my job. It made me remember that, even in the busy crazy times, I’ve got to sit down and really talk to my students about their lives.

It changed me as a person, as tragedy does.

I guess what I want to say is, even though people don’t talk about you much nine months later …

You are not forgotten.

I remember you.  

I’m sorry that I didn’t do more for you when you were alive. 

You deserved the chance to go to college and have a good life.

I’m sorry that they still haven’t found your killer. 

I care, even if they don’t.

And I’m so sorry for what happened to you.

Sincerely,

Miss Melissa

This I believe

I believe I sit at Jesus’s feet every day.
Looking up in pure awe and wonder... 

sometimes in utter confusion.

I know I must do the best I can.

I know I have to allow compassion to guide even the hardest of decisions.

I believe this life is worth it
The pain, the joy
The love received and love lost…
I believe it’s all worth it.

I believe everyone has a great struggle
And we need to remember this when we hate, or feel jealously, or judge.
We may not see it, or know it, or feel it
But a struggle is within all of us.

I believe you can’t spend too much time in worry and fear.
You must be a rock
You must shelter the storm with your resolve.

Anticipate the sunrise - Be steady, be still.

I believe you must have hope
Without it, there is nothing.
Material things slip from our fingers
People come and go,
but hope is eternal

I believe inner peace is possible.
You just have to want it bad enough.
Accept nothing less from yourself.

This I believe.

The Castle

Two years ago today, I was depressed, unhappy, miserable, not as efficient as I should be at work, a financial mess, lonely, 20 pounds heavier, and unfilfilled in just about all of my life's desires.

Although I no longer recognize that person, I remember that person. Most of all, I remember how I became that person.

The truth is, the main reason of my unhappiness (with some contributing factors), was that I chose to live my life with a bad person.

I made that decision. Today I can fully accept that decision, and the faulty reasoning that went with it. I had good intentions in making the decision, and with sticking with it for so long, but in all my good intentions, I forgot to look out for number one (me).

In making the decision in who you choose to accept in your life, you are looking out for yourself. You are protecting yourself and your life. You are loving yourself, something I've only recently learned how to fully do.

By letting good people into your life, you transform your own destiny. Today, I've drastically changed who I let into my life. I've found it's amazing what you can change in just two years with a couple of big decisions.

With good people in your life, you find that you don't have to worry about whether they truly care about you. They will fight for you. They will be there for you. They won't talk bad behind your back. They won't throw you under the bus. They won't lie, cheat, deceive, or hurt you, physically or emotionally. They won't make selfish decisions with no regard for you. You don't have to lose sleep at night, or double-check their whereabouts.

You don't have to worry they will lose another job and put your house into foreclosure by sleeping all day instead of looking for a new job, punching a family member while incredibly drunk, or crashing into a car with no insurance and no license, putting you into thousands of dollars of insurance debt (obviously NOT random examples).

Today, all of that is in the past. I am happy, fulfilled, joyful, grateful, in love, successful at work, financially secure, fit and healthy, and surrounded by friends and people who truly care about me. I have an amazing husband who has accepted my past and helped me to climb out of all the mess that was my life.

God is so good! It's taken me a lot of money, lawyers and time, but I am finally away from the bad influence of the past. I'm so grateful for the wisdom God gave me the past two years.

I will never go back to who I was then, and I have put plenty of safeguards in place to ensure that, the main safeguard of being careful who I accept into my life, and of carefully controlling my reactions to others' actions.

It can be harder than you think. Especially when you are one of those people that cares about ALL other people, regardless of who they are and what they've done. You have to make a logical (not emotional) conscious fact-check in your head. You have to constantly re-evaluate your choices in your acquaintances. You have to be careful.

Or, as my former therapist said: "Help your students. Help people at work. You shouldn't have to help your husband. He should help you. He should be someone you can look up to and respect, not someone that needs your help."

Think about your life as a castle with a moat that surrounds it. An impenetrable stone wall blocks invaders - a wall that only you can open and let people in.

You must protect the castle of your life.

Who will you let in your life, and who will you block?

Who is in your life right now that may be causing you problems - whether intentional or unintentional?

Did you ever think that maybe if you open the gate and let someone in that you've misjudged, that they can become a poison to your entire community, slowly morphing your surroundings until it's a scary place you no longer recognized?

I don't mean just significant others, either.

Friends can do this. Family can do this. Those most unassuming individuals who look like a pretty package outside can actually be very ugly and rotten inside.

Those people who keep coming back, even after you've evicted them. Because you let them.

See, if your life falls to ruins, you can't entirely blame another individual. You are an individual. You have choice about how you live your life, regardless of how others treat you. You have decisions. You have the ability to change and grow, regardless of others' influences.

In fact, there are signs that you can watch for, if you think your problems may be from another individual's influence. I wish someone had shown me these signs and made me evaluate my former ugly person. Maybe I'd changed things if I'd known what a huge mistake I was making.

Or maybe not. Maybe I needed to hit rock bottom to see clearly.

All I know is that now I know this: It's okay to judge people. It's okay to deny people. You can love them at a distance. You can have empathy for them. You can forgive them.

Just don't let them into your castle.

You have to take accountability for the role you played in who you let into your life. That was hard for me, because I had good intentions. But look where they got me.

I know now that I control my life. I control who is in it as well.  Learning to take control of my life and taking a poisonous person out of my life had huge positive implications in nearly every aspect of my life.

I'll never forget going to a new church not long after I'd started dating my now husband, and the sermon focusing on the "people you partner your life with." There was a list similar to the one below, and I remember looking at him from the side of my eye and thinking, "He is none of these horrible things. I've done it. I've found someone who will make my life better, not worse. I've found someone I can respect and trust."

And I married him.

Below, here are some traits that you need to watch out for. Of course, everyone makes mistakes. Repetition of these things is what is dangerous.

Evaluate the people in your life. Fire them if necessary. Just don't let them poison the community. It's never to late to kick them out.

Liars (not little white lies, repeated lies about important things)
Deception (hiding who they are, their actions, living two lives, etc.)
Abusers (physical and emotional)
Drug users
Felons
Angry people who act out in their anger
People who don't care about their personal growth
People who don't care about other people or their families
People you don't respect
People who don't make good decisions in general (financial, moral, impulsive, etc.)