There are many things that I would like to say to you...
and I finally know how. I wrote this last night:
"When I am depressed, my friends ask me what can they do to make me feel better? They say they'll do anything, they just don't know what. So I say this now: love yourselves. In that way, all the young lives that have been destroyed by depression and suicide will not have been in vain. Help to stop the darkness by first igniting the light within you. See what I see; all the love and life and soul within you. Take heart and be strong, persevere, so that so many lives will not have been in vain. Be not nonchalant about each day; take chances, learn to trust, be resilient. Live your life to the fullest in respect to I, who have come closest to death. When you ask what you can do to help, just love yourself, so that the scars on my wrist and the wounds on my heart will not go unheeded. Learn from me, my loves."
About a month ago, right after my cousin Jimmy died, my mom mentioned something to sad I could feel my heart squeezing and teargin apart. She merely observed how so many kids, like Jimmy, want to live more than anything, but that right has been taken from them. Then there are others who get to live, and experience all the wonderful things, but just want to die.
At Jimmy's wake, there were so many people, the line wove through the funeral home, out the door, through the parking lot, and up the highway. Jimmy was young, he was happy, he loved football, but he died of cancer.
How many of us know a friend who has succumbed to depression, and taken their lives?
I realized last night what I will be doing for the rest of my life, what my mission will be. To make people happy. To make them feel happy to be alive. To convince them to love, in memory of those whose lives have been cut so short. This is my humble beginning.
I hope that anyone who might read this makes the effort to love, trust, and persevere. For Jimmy, for Stephanie Fritz, for Kurt Cobain, for everyone who is lost. Someday, if I have anything to do with it, they will be found.
This is everything I've ever wanted to say to anyone, but didn't know how. This is the crux of my entire life. This is why I constantly take the stupid chances that I so often fail at. Why I try to convince you, my darlings, to do the same. Every day, to those who have died, is one day they will not get to share in all the Universe has to offer. Help me in loving double, just for the lost, the loved, the remembered. For them.