In times of tragedy, the late Gia Allemand‘s boyfriend Ryan Anderson is turning to both his faith and his friends. The lanky 6’10” New Orleans Pelicans player looked like he was on the verge of tears during an interview with the Times-Picayune on Monday, Sept. 30, but the athlete said that he’s finally starting to regaining a sense of normalcy following the Bachelor star’s August suicide.
“Every day is a challenge. It helps to be here, my family’s with me,” he said, speaking out for the first time since Allemand’s Aug. 12 death. “To be with my teammates helps a lot, but it’s a roller coaster.”
Anderson, 25, was the one who found his Bachelor alum girlfriend hanging in her New Orleans home that day, and attempted to revive her until medical personnel arrived on the scene. Allemand, 29, would remain on life support for two days before dying at University Hospital, New Orleans, on Wednesday, Aug. 14.
“I praise God every day to have Him in my life,” Anderson said. “It would have been very, very hard to get through these steps if I didn’t have Him, to have God, to have Jesus Christ in my life.”
“You know when you’re thinking about something and preparing for something and it seems a lot more difficult, but when you go through it, you overcome it, and each step of the way has been something like that,” he added. “I feel really glad that coach asked me back when he did. I’ve been here for a few weeks now and just being around the guys, being at the gym, just having some sort of routing back, it helps a little bit.”
Anderson and Allemand had dated for about two-and-a-half years, but had begun to butt heads over their differing views of their future together in the weeks leading up to her death.
“He started breakup talks,” a source told Us of the couple’s arguments. “They were fighting a lot.”
Two days after Allemand’s funeral service at Trinity Grace Church in NYC, however, Anderson wrote a heartfelt tribute to his late girlfriend, calling her his “love.”
“Every second of everyday, I miss you,” he wrote on Saturday, Aug. 24. “I feel lost without you but find strength knowing that you are in Heaven. Rest in peace my love.”
