You Saved Me

Prologue

Over the past few days people have asked if I felt grateful for my life now. If what happened to me changed my life forever and If I kiss my parents and tell them I love them every chance I get. But truth is, I don't. Because I am human. I did the first two days, still high off shock and recovery. But in reality all humans take life for granted.

We just can't help it.

And after my experience I still will.

People also ask me if I will look back on this time and be afraid. If I will look back over my shoulder for the rest of my life.  And I probably will. Because that is human nature to protect ourselves even though the probability of something similar happening again is unlikely.

I realized so many things in the 9 hours of my horrid event. And I lost and found few things too. It was terrible. For example, I found the love of my life. I lost a few friends. Well, I guess one was  a sort of friend. I think she was another part of my realization more than a friend. Running past her dead body made me shiver. I look back now and wish for the time I could reverse back and save her. But then if I had stopped, checked her pulse, something. I wouldn't be able to regret that moment right now because I'd be dead myself.

It pains me so much that she had a family. That the rest of the people that died that day had a family. And that the victims family has to face the rest of their lives going through every  day without their loved one. That they have to pass a birthday every year and have their child, grandchild, sibling or friend not even there to blow out the candles.

That thought haunts me.

My Mom also had a huge life changing event happen to her that you might remember. She had a stalker following her around and she looks back over her shoulder every once in a while. She was  kidnapped and held captive in some closed in place or something. She doesn't like to talk about the details. Turns out the kidnapper was my dad's best friend from high school.

Sound familiar? Yeah. My mom is Lennon Janno and My dad is Parker Campano. They had some weird, cliche bad boy-nerd love story.

My mom still fears the thought of someone taking one of my brothers or me. She even is scared it'll happen to her again.

The last question people have asked me is one I answer with the same word. "No." Reporters and people from my community that see me walking down the street stop to ask me if I'll ever get over something like this. But I don't think anyone ever gets over anything. We just learn to live with it. And it'll be hard for the first days, weeks, months or years. But I'll learn to live with it because that's what people do. They lose a loved one and learn to live with it. We just have to ignore the physical and mental scars placed on us. This will be a mental and physical scar and the wound isn't somewhere I can hide it but we can get to that later. So no, I won't get over it. I never will. But I also won't spend the rest of my life thinking about it because life moves fast and we have to go with it.

Thinking about all this now I lay on my bed and scroll through Twitter and look at the hashtags that were created for me and the people affected from this tragic day for my little town Madison, Georgia.

So here's my story.

The story of how I continue to look over my shoulder. How something falling on the ground makes me jump. I guess you would think this is a "The Story of Us " part two. But it's not.

If I were to give you a summary of this book. I would say it's half of a ying-yang. The half where there is good in the bad not bad in the good.

This is my memory of the worst day of my life. And I'm here to share it with you.