JessikaForJustice

Six years ago today, the life I knew was taken from me. The day started off ordinary. We had plans to go to the movies that day. But instead, I went to the office. Buried in spreadsheets, chasing perfection, trying to wrap up the quarter. While I was focused on emails and numbers, he was dying. Austin was being murdered. His life was stolen by someone else’s choice, someone else’s violence. And I had no idea my entire world was already breaking. I was eating ice cream with a coworker when the call came. I let out a sound I didn’t know I was capable of, a guttural scream that came from somewhere primal. I slid down a wall and collapsed to the ground. I hyperventilated for the first time in my life. And in that moment, I felt something inside me break. Something I’ve never been able to repair. I’ve carried survivor’s guilt ever since. The what ifs still haunt me. What if I hadn’t gone to the office? What if we had changed our plans? What if I could have somehow saved him? Six years. It is not just a marker of time. It is the weight of every moment lived without him, every fight I’ve carried on his behalf, and every breath I’ve taken when it felt impossible to breathe at all. Austin’s life mattered. What happened to him mattered. He was funny, loyal, full of love and plans for the future. He deserved so much more than what was done to him. You don’t walk away from something like this unchanged. Everything I’ve done to challenge a broken justice system has been in honor of him and for every person still fighting for the justice they deserve. I speak because silence would dishonor him. Because he deserves to be remembered with truth, with courage, and with relentless love. And I do it for everyone else who has been left in the aftermath still waiting, still fighting, still carrying it all alone. This is what being left in the wake of homicide looks like.

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