I picked up the phone to hear a sniffling noise, as if someone was crying. I started assuming what had happened. But, before I could say anything my mom yelled, “Her mom is dead.”

 No words came out of my mouth. My mom continued to scream as she uncontrollably cried, “Kelly killed herself!” 

I felt stuck. I wanted to scream but I couldn’t. I felt like a soda can, as if someone shook me up and it was a matter of time before I exploded. I was like a gutter at the end of a storm. Raindrops were slowly dripping one by one from my eyes. Those few seconds of silence after my mom said those words felt longer than a lifetime. 

About six years ago, I was in Sioux, Wisconsin. I was at my friend’s cabin for the fourth of July when I was 11. This was the first time I had ever been away from home without any immediate family. I never was the type of kid to get homesick. But, I went from hysterically laughing to hysterically crying in less than two days. As I waited for my family to pick me up, Kelly comforted me. She gave me a little avocado stuffed plushie to cling to. She calmly whispered while she was sitting right to my left, “It’s simple. Close your eyes. Imagine balloons floating from the ground up and on those balloons there are numbers starting from 100 counting down.”

Now, holding my phone after hearing the news, I attempted to imagine the balloons and their glistening colors with numbers corresponding to the order at which they levitated. The trick worked. To this day, I still use this method. Anytime I am lying in my bed, with thoughts overflowing my head like a filled garbage can, I think of her and what she taught me. 

I walk into the kitchen. That avocado stuffed plushie she let me hold during that weekend is now mine. It was given to me by her family. This stupidly simple avocado plushie was the softest thing I’ve ever touched. As my finger glazed over the green fur, I spontaneously felt comfort. I never got to ask her why she loved it so much. Now, I’m left to wonder. 

Everytime I walk through there, I feel her. Remembering how she comforted me that day in Sioux. There isn’t at least one point in a day she doesn’t come into my head. Remembering how she was there for me. Remembering how she was a mother to me. 

As her family handed me her avocado, I could only think of one thing: being there for others. Those who have the same struggles as she did. So their families don’t have to sit in agony reminiscing about all the great memories they had together. So that they can create more memories or even greater ones. So others don’t have to fill in the blanks of the wonders they never got answered.

Kelly is gone. Forever. But I can prevent this from happening to others. I want people to be able to write about their loved ones in the present tense and not the past tense like I have to. Since that day, it has truly influenced me to make sure that people don’t take their lives like she did. To understand people's minds on a deeper level and learn about the human brain and its ways through psychology.