“He’s in jail for murder.”
The last words she hears from her parents before her body hits the ground. Blurry vision cuts in and out as she feels hot breath on her face. She opens her eyes to see her German Shepherd hovering over her, not allowing her parents to go near her. She sits up confused, then remembers why she ended up on the floor. “He’s in jail for murder.” Her best friend. Her brother. Arrested for murder. Since that day, senior Sadie Krumm puts on a mask, blocking the world from the pain she feels.
“Everyone else thinks I’m a happy, joyful person because I help others,” Krumm said, “but really, I help others because I don’t want to see them go down the same slide I went down.”
On the morning of March 12, 2022, Krumm watched as her show goat, Winston, loads on the trailer heading to the meat market in the Tarrant County Junior Livestock Show. She’s shown goats for two years and now shows steers. Krumm found a community in FFA and support from her animals.
“If it wasn’t for FFA, I don’t know where I’d be, honestly,” Krumm said. “They are my savior. My animals are my best friends that can’t talk. I can go in there, and I can talk to them and they’re not going to turn around and act fake toward me. It’s an amazing thing to have.”
When Krumm got home, she headed straight to her bed, exhausted from the long day and hard loss of her goat. After her nap, she went to the kitchen where her parents asked to talk to her. She watched their mouths move as she heard the words, “He’s in jail for murder.”
“They told me that my brother was locked up, and I was thinking, ‘Oh, what did you do this time?’ because it wasn’t the first time he’d been locked up,” Krumm said. “It was nothing new. I actually laughed at it.”
After that, she only remembers waking up on the floor, feeling her dog’s hot breath on her skin. Months after the arrest, Krumm slept in her brother’s room. Krumm’s bedroom stayed the same for nearly two years as she hesitated to lose that connection to her brother.
“The days after that, I got really depressed. I couldn’t snap out of it,” Krumm said. “Whenever I came back to school after spring break, everything felt like it was in third person. I could see myself going through everything. Everything felt unreal.”
During her struggles, Krumm reached out to Officer John Godwin and found comfort and support she didn’t know she needed. Officer Godwin remembers meeting Krumm two years ago and recognizes her growth since then.
“At first, she would just get heated and explode. And now she comes to me and backs the truck up on me and throws everything on me,” Officer Godwin said. “She’s grown as far as she wants to talk before she acts instead of acting when she should have talked. She’s a little bit slower to anger.”
Krumm found talking to someone was needed to begin recovering. Officer Godwin believes offering a listening ear provides the best help to others.
“If you just give someone a listening ear, a lot of times, you can get a lot of stuff from people. Lots of people just want you to listen,” Officer Godwin said. “A lot of people are not willing to take time and just listen to people and their issues. And that’s why a lot of them act out. Because whether it’s good attention or bad attention, a lot of them are just wanting attention.”
Two years after her brother’s arrest, Krumm recognizes her mental health struggles and focuses on improving her way of life. Krumm focuses on adjusting to her new life. Her brother’s voice which once sounded so familiar to her now shows as words on a paper as they write back and forth.
“So it’s just kind of slowly realizing this is the new normal and just having to find the new normal for that situation,” Krumm said. “I feel like if I would have reached out to someone for help sooner, I wouldn’t have struggled or done some of the things that I did, and it would have just been a better experience. I would have been able to get through a little bit longer, but it took time. Everyone takes things differently.”
