I was lonely, my self-confidence had hit an all-time low. I looked like a confident person on the outside, but on the inside, I felt like complete trash. How was I supposed to feel normal again? It had only been two weeks since I got out of my abusive relationship and then in comes Arik Mack.
Arik was already following me on all social media, and I didn’t know who he was. Apparently, we had met once before but I don’t even remember, probably because there was so much going on with my crazy ex at the time. The funny thing was, Arik thought that I didn’t like him, and in the beginning…I didn’t.
We met through one of my best girlfriends that played on the tennis team with me… she was friends with him, and we all went out for lunch one day. Being in athletics everyone somewhat becomes friends with each other, and Arik was on the BYU baseball team. I thought he was immature and annoying. I remember he kept taking super ugly pictures of me and then putting them on Snap Chat. I honestly wondered why my friend even liked hanging out with him.
As the week went by, my friend and I kept hanging out with him and slowly I began to realize he really wasn’t annoying or immature like I had initially thought. It also didn’t hurt that I thought he was pretty cute. As I got to know him over the course of that week, we hit it off.
Side note: I met Arik the end of my Freshman year at BYU which was Mid-March of 2014.
This is Arik Mack – Hudsons biological father
We started hanging out alone, and we realized our personalities were quite similar. Just like me, he also just got out of a relationship about the same time. We bonded over the freedom of being single, and the exemption from toxic relationships. He was the exact OPPOSITE of my ex, and I think that’s why I was SO drawn to him so fast. He was fun and was always down to go on adventures. We started hanging out alone every.single.day.
I met his parents after only a week of hanging out/dating. By now we were so comfortable with each other that this new fling we were developing felt like something worth chasing. I went to his “family only” birthday dinner and he’d casually bring me to his house to hang out with his family all the time. It was something so new, so fresh, and so exciting.
Arik’s Family Birthday Dinner – he just turned 19
He was wild… for a Mormon that is, but so was I at the time. He drank, went to parties, and did pretty much whatever he wanted… he never feared potential consequences. At this point in time I was so used to drinking that it just seemed like a normal thing for me and when it came to being with Arik, there was something about him that just made me feel so free. So Arik and I drank together on the weekends, but drinking with him was fun… it wasn’t like before where I was forced to drink. When I was with him, I didn’t have a care in the world.
For example… I would sneak Arik into my dorm room a lot of nights to hang out/ have sleepovers (nothing sexual). Side note: At BYU the dorms are girls only, the boys cannot be anywhere inside the dorms after 9 pm. This is something I normally would NEVER do. I would be way too scared to get caught because if I did, there would be SERIOUS consequences from BYU. But like I said, with him, I was carefree. I felt like I was invincible.
We were basically attached by the hip as the school year started coming to an end. We went to parties, we did homework together, and he introduced me to all of his friends. Like I said before, we spent every day together, we were inseparable.
Then came finals week. I had just gotten out of a final when I looked at my phone and it had 5 missed calls from Arik with a text saying, “call me, something bad has just happened”.
To be continued…
Timeline of My Story So Far –
December 31st, 2012 – Met my crazy ex-boyfriend
Beginning of March 2014 – Broke up with the crazy ex
Mid-March 2014 – Met Arik (Hudson’s biological father)
