The night of the homecoming football game of my Junior year of high school will go down in history as the genesis of the worst time in my life. Like at most other football games, my peers and I were beyond excited. My family and many others were set up in the parking lot to tailgate. Everything was great until I received a call that I would never recover from. I remember sobbing against my dad’s chest, leaving streaks purple and gold face paint on his shirt.

Penning this edition of From Toddler To Teen has challenged me in all the right ways. Over the last three weeks (during which I didn’t write because I suck at this) I have rewritten this post countless times on paper and in my head. I’m crying now just thinking about reliving this time. This is part of the magic of being a writer; the ability to travel back in time and the foresight to know when to come back. I’ve told you about my music taste, that time I peed my pants, but this won’t be a funny story. This is sad. This is real. This is the tale of a child who couldn’t best cancer and the people she left behind.

A part of me died when my best friend, Cassie Hook, was lowered in the ground the week following that homecoming game. Her lifeless body had been beaten, cut and broken over the two years prior due to leukemia. Cassie and I spent years of our childhood playing Lord of the Rings with sticks in the back yard, or football (Bryce was the only one with any skill),  or Halo (my parents didn’t let me play games with guns, Cassie’s did)  and being children. She was probably 15 when she was diagnosed, and even though our lives changed drastically, they kind of stayed the same.

The dichotomy of the painful procedures, long car rides to the hospital in Indianapolis, and nothing but bad news should have destroyed us, Cassie’s family and the rest of our friends. But somehow, Cassie used this time to the best of her ability. She had to drop out of school, so she now had all the time to play video games. She never learned to drive, so she was chauffeured by everyone in her life. She could no longer swim or play with us at her family’s lake, so she sat at the shore and jokingly insulted our dopey antics.

Cancer killed Cassie. But it never killed her spirit. She never lost her chipper attitude, sense of humor or faith in God. And that made one of us. On that evening when I got the news, the person who was Chris Tulley died and new one was born from the ashes of blunts and bowls. I was a good kid. I had huge faith in God. And I knew, we all did, that Cassie wouldn’t survive this. But that night, I lost myself. I gave into peer pressure. I smoked so much weed I threw up in a friend’s garage (sorry family, and possible employers).

From this point on, I lost my identity. I had no room for God, even though Bryce and I both read scripture at her funeral. To this day, I’m cautious about Christianity. Unfortunately for me, I have a deep need for God.

I lost a year of school (and brain cells) to drugs and alcohol. I lied to my parents, hid things from friends, but I just couldn’t find a fuck to give. I became a Hollywood Teen, living from weekend to weekend just to brag on Monday’s about my latest high. This was the only way I could find that would drown out Cassie’s pain, my pain. If she got morphine (Or whatever you give cancer patients) then I at least deserved something, right?

I wish I knew what snapped me out of this rut. Maybe the guilt hit me, maybe someone finally talked some truth at me, who knows. One day I realized that I was a waste of space, I had nothing going for me, no hope, and that had to change. So while I hesitate to call myself a Christian today, my desire for purpose, for hope, is rooted deeply in the reality of God.When it comes to Christianity, at least I have some semblance that I suck and have a need for something bigger than myself.

That time in my life did bring both good and bad changes. Bryce (my best friend) and Tanner (Cassie’s younger brother)  and I have a bond unlike any others in my friend groups. Bryce stood by my side at my wedding, and I’m so proud to say I get to be in each of theirs next year. I lived with Tanner while his family was away in Indy all those months. He is my brother from another mother (yo!) 

But I was never close to the same. As an adult, I’m cynical, pessimistic and egotistic. I learned that bad things happen to everyone, and that life sucks. But I will always cherish that teary-eyed moment with my dad in the parking lot. And the friends and family that came together during our grief. The Hooks, the Hiebers, these are people who will always love me because we worked together to tackle tragedy. Bryce and his fiancee Tiffany, Tanner and his Paige, and Morgan and I are now as close as Bryce and Tanner were to me as kids. We created this family out of the need for each other. I still need them.

High schoolers shouldn’t die. Parents shouldn’t bury children. But our family, and our God, never failed.