Four Years An Angel...

Shortening this story is tough, but if I don’t, I could go on all day about it. It’s crazy how, sometimes, people can have such an impact on your life in ways you would never think possible. Four years ago, when I still had a pretty small Twitter following (if you count a thousand or so as small) I had this girl who followed me by the name of Melissa Guerra. She was this pretty girl from Houston, TX, who would just post random things about her everyday life and “like” alot of the things I would tweet. It was probably a little under a month and I don’t know who hit who up first, but we struck conversation. She said she loved my music and told me that she had a little daughter she was raising with her boyfriend and I told her about my 1 1/2 year old at the time and just shared laughs, advice, and best practices. From that convo on, we talked on a daily basis. I would always shout her out on my account to my followers and she would always greet me with a “good morning”, something positive & motivational, and we would check in on how our family and days were going. It became a routine. My day wasn’t ready to start without a “good morning” from her and some cool words of encouragement and positivity which she would provide like clockwork. This girl didn’t miss a day and they ALWAYS came in around the same time. As someone who suffers and battles constantly with depression and anxiety, her motivation and support had me feeling like I could conquer the world. She would always tease me about being so positive and upbeat and to always keep it going because it helped her get through her days as well. My postings made her laugh and smile. Little did she know that her influence on me was one of the reasons why. I woke up April 10th, 2014 ready to read her message and get my day started on a positive note. I checked my inbox and found nothing. I sent her a message thinking maybe she was really busy or just didn’t have time, but that wasn’t like her. I called, no answer. For two and a half months of consistency and all of the sudden nothing? Not even a text? It wasn’t until I took a lunch break at work (I was still in training) when I got a message from her friend who told me Melissa and her boyfriend were murdered the night before on April 9th at their home with their crying child in between them being how they were discovered. I was stunned! At first I thought maybe her friend was making something up because I didn’t even know this girl who sent me the message. So I googled and found the news story and TV story confirming it. Such an amazing woman who provided so much motivation and support to me was murdered just like that. It was hard waking up and not seeing those messages that made me smile and feel motivated everyday. Even to this day, no one has duplicated or come close to how this girl helped me in such a short period of time with some motivational messages and conversation on a daily basis. There are so many ways you can impact someone’s life is such a short timespan and she impacted mine in a significant way that always and forever will stay with me and is one of the driving forces behind some of the things I do today with reaching out to people. I still keep her Twitter handle in my “favorites” and some of her positive words and tweets to me saved that weren’t deleted. Thank you for what you did for me in the short time we had.

RIP Melissa