Student seeks peace through openness and vulnerability
This past April, Natalia Weekly was browsing through Instagram while sitting at the resident assistant’s desk in Norse Commons during her shift. She noticed a post with her friend Josh Vaughn's picture.
"I can't believe this is real-Rest in peace," the post read.
A flurry of thoughts rushed through Natalia's mind.
"No? This is not real right now. This is not true," Natalia thought to herself.
Residents were coming to the resident assistant’s desk trying to get mail and let back into their room after being locked out. Natalia was hesitant to call her friend George from Louisville to confirm. He was the closest to Josh.
She phoned another friend with her Louisville group, Sydni, to see if she had heard the news.
"What are you talking about? I don't know what you're talking about. Let me call George," Sydni said with panic and hung up.
After Natalia called her friend Briana to see if she was aware of the rumor, Sydni called her back.
“Yeah, it’s real. He died in a car accident,” Sydni said.
Josh was going too fast around a winding road and crashed into a tree, said Natalia.
Natalia was trying to play the incident off and not make a scene.
“I was just in my own little world in my own mind,” Natalia said. “I was trying to stay strong. I didn’t want to cry at the R.A. desk.”
The group had become friends Natalia’s freshman year of high school. George introduced Josh to everyone one afternoon when they were hanging out on Bardstown Road in Louisville. They would spend a lot of time at locations like Tyler Park, Qdoba and Ear-X-Tacy.
Natalia often needs time to warm up to new people, but liked Josh instantly. They also both liked the band Passion Pit.
“He was born on Valentine’s day, so you gotta love him,” Natalia said. “He was just really funny, outgoing, laid back. He could just always put a smile on your face.”
She found him to be hilarious and personable. Josh’s personality helped Natalia to let her guard down.
“He probably just never knew the effect he had on people and just how many people loved him and enjoyed being around him even with all the things he was struggling with,” she said. “He always just kept a brave face for all of us.”
This has been the first experience Natalia has had with losing someone close to her. She doesn’t feel she has handled the last several months as well as she could have.
“They’ve been hard I’m not going to lie,” she said. “I have not dealt with it as well as I should have. At first I was very closed off and just did not express my feelings. I didn’t like let it show that it had phased me, but people were noticing that something was off about me.”
Looking back over the last several months Natalia feels she wasn’t always in the moment despite the fact that she kept herself very busy.
“I just really poured myself into my work. This past summer I was an orientation leader,” Natalia said. “I was not focusing on the bad, but at night I was crying myself to sleep.”
She is the student co-director of the Northern Kentucky Leadership Institute and the president of Leadership Mentors. Natalia is also the vice president of Presidential Ambassadors and the director of homecoming for the Activities Programming Board.
Driving home to Louisville for Josh’s funeral, Natalia began to see that if she didn’t talk to someone then no one could comfort her.
“I was alone. I was in the car by myself and I was just like...I just want somebody to be there for me really, but then again I didn’t express that I had lost someone,” she said.
She had originally intended to stay for the wake on Sunday, but ended up emailing her professor to miss her first exam on Monday so she could stay for Josh’s funeral. She still keeps the funeral program in her wallet.
Natalia said she has always been seen as strong and independent. Her mother raised her to not show emotion and not be weak, she added.
“You should be able to be weak and be like ‘Hey I need support, I need to cry, I need to shout, I need to punch somebody,’” she said looking back.
Natalia would like students to understand that it is okay to let whatever you are feeling out.
“Don’t be afraid to express those feelings especially with your friends and family, especially with them,” Natalia said. “I owe people apologies for not expressing my feelings then when they asked at the beginning.”