It gets better, I promise.

4/20 is the birthday of a couple of my friends...
but most people think of it as the national weed holiday.
It's always been kind of a sad day for me.
When I was in 6th grade, one of my first e-friends died of cancer on April 20th, 2002.
She was only 14. I was 12.
It's been 9 years.
I haven't thought about it in a long, long time,
but I had a kind of flashback when I was at the grocery store today.
(It'll all make sense in a little bit, I swear.)
...When I was 16 or 17, I had a mental breakdown that summer.
Worse than my other high school years.
My mom told me I was pretty much chronically suicidal, but I was so drugged with anti-depressants & anti-anxiety pills that I don't remember it. (Or most of high school, actually...)
I apparently passed out on the grass in the front yard.
My mom tried to wake me up by doing all kinds of stuff but nothing made me move.
It was during that time that I had the weirdest dream...
I don't remember that day at all, but I remember the dream so clearly.
I dreamed I was in this weird park...there were trees everywhere, like no tree I've ever seen anywhere I've ever lived. They were like weeping willows but with fuller leaves. There was water everywhere too, like puddles. Not mud puddles, though. The water was really clear and blue.
There was a rope swing tied to one of the trees, and Hello Kitty was swinging on it.
(Told you. Super weird.)
Then this girl that had died like 5 years earlier was hanging out with Hello Kitty, and she started talking to me.
She told me that I have to keep pushing and not give up, because there were so many good things in life that I didn't deserve to miss out on. She said there were things in life much bigger than prom or who would add me on Myspace.
I was in high school. So that's basically all that DID exist in my life at the time. I couldn't imagine anything else. I didn't think waiting would be worth it. I thought I was better off dead for a couple more years after that. I told this girl that she didn't understand. By that time I was in the hospital laying on a bed, and my mom said I was staring up at the ceiling having a conversation with someone she couldn't see. She said she didn't think I was sleeping, because my words weren't slurred at all. She says I woke up just like I had gotten up from a nap, and asked for tacos.
I think I get it now...what happened, although I still have no idea what that experience was.
Maybe that girl was my conscience projected onto another body. Who knows.
But now that I'm out of the torture chamber called high school,
and my dysfunctional family is basically not involved with my life,
I have seen so many amazing things that make me happy to be here and alive.
I wish I could tell every depressed, bullied, lonely girl who has no safe place,
that the pain doesn't last. It comes and goes, but there's more to life than that...
They've just gotta wait for it.
I got really, really close to offing myself a couple different times.
Even though there are probably still people I know who wish I had succeeded,
I'm glad I didn't get my way.

My mother and my grandma were the only people who knew about this experience, but now that I made sense of it, I don't see why I shouldn't share it...it was quite interesting.

Oh, and here's one of my new favorite songs. Ignoring the parts about being in a famous band, this song is my life story.