PERSONAL ESSAY
What is my experience?
Personal Essay
Thomas Carroll
October 16, 2016 was the day my life changed forever. It was a normal school day for me. Just got out of lunch to go and do some homework in the library I didn’t finish before a baseball meeting. As I am deep in my work, I hear my phone buzz in my pocket. It wasn’t a normal snapchat notification or as a sophomore, a game alert. For some reason, I felt that there was something wrong. I answered my phone, It was my mom.
I answer the call with a soft, “Hello?”
My mom replies in a cracked voice: “Hi, honey.”
I shyly reply, “Hi.”
She took a deep breath in and almost cries out, “Thomas, Jamie is dead.”
Shocked but confused I reply, “Oh no I am so sorry, who are you talking about?”
During saying this, I start heading to my baseball meeting not really thinking about the outcome. I pass some friends and knuckle bump my coach as I walk into the conference room.
She replies, “Thomas, our Jamie, Jamie Macmahon died.” As soon as I heard “our” my mouth drops, I start thinking, and it seems the room is spinning. I start panicking. The walls start to cave in. I just started to think about life with him, showing up to my grandparents without him sitting on the couch, without him making me laugh so hard I spit out my Thanksgiving Turkey, or trying to take sips out of our older cousins beers. Right away tears start prying my eyes apart and all of my teammates start looking and almost started to laugh at me. One of my teammates even asked me if I was crying over my current girlfriend, trying to make a joke out of it. After the joke, I couldn’t take it anymore. I throw my phone, jump out of my seat and sprint to the bathroom just trying to get away from everything. I run into the stall and sit down and just cry and cry. Some of my teammates tried to console me but I just pushed them away.
From such a short experience, nothing has impacted my life more. To this day, I replay this over and over constantly. It’s what I wake up to, It’s what I eat to, It’s what I fall asleep to. These projects have been more than just another school assignment, I did this topic to learn and be able to teach people about the opioid epidemic so what happened to me doesn’t happen to someone else. I lost my brother, I lost happiness, and I lost hope. This was the most traumatic thing to happen in my life and probably will be the worst because how close I was with him. It’s hard living, just knowing he’s watching me and can see every mistake I do. To me, him dying was me having to pick up his legacy. To prove he wasn’t some loser, he wasn’t a kid who was raised poorly. This happened to a hard working good kid. Without this drug and this problem the world, will be a happier and more reliable place.