I don't believe in God. I don't even believe in a lowercase g god. The only afterlife I could possibly believe in is that our energy goes back into the atmosphere and space and we are either reincarnated as something new that uses our energy, or we just eventually become part of a meteor. When I say reincarnated, I don't mean our consciousness, I just mean our energy helps to create something new. Maybe that sounds crazier than all that christian bullshit, but it's the only theory I give credence to.
With that being said though, I do think heaven and hell exist. They just don't exist in the way we have all come to conceptualize them. Heaven peeks through in our day to day lives if we're lucky, and we just have to be watching enough to appreciate it. Maybe I just have this viewpoint because I have depression, so maybe heaven for me is just the norm for other people. But I think everyone kind of has their own version of heaven.
This morning I was in heaven when I woke up to my dad yelling that breakfast was ready. I never eat breakfast, unless you count a Monster and my pills as such. I had been planning on sleeping the day away because, well, as I said- depression. But I decided to go upstairs and breakfast was amazing. Tia made the best toast I've literally ever had in my entire life and my dad made pancakes that weren't too fluffy (fluffy pancakes always make me want to stop eating because they're so filling and bland). Not just was the food amazing, though, but so was the atmosphere. None of us had a care in the world, we just all sat around the table talking. I don't know how it could have possibly been better, even Caiti was there. Even when my dad started jokingly giving us a hard time about all the leaves we had to rake today, I felt at peace.
Another time I went to heaven was when I was in the car with Kai in her driveway and when we pulled back up to the house, we just kind of sat for a few minutes. We didn't decide to sit, and we didn't talk about sitting, it was just a moment where neither of us got out of the car and we enjoyed each others' company. Her dad's Star Shower Christmas projector was on and we watched the designs dance around as music softly played from her radio. That was the first time I remember thinking moments like these were heaven, and I told her about it.
One morning as I was walking to school from the middle school, because that's where my mom dropped Caiti off and she didn't want to drive me to the high school, I remember going to heaven. Well, I don't know if this one was actually heaven, maybe it was just a beauty of earth. But I remember feeling suddenly so inexplicably happy. Like there was nothing better in the world than walking right now, as I felt the ground under my feet and the breeze in my hair and the sun on my skin. I remember beaming all the way into school because it was the first day of real spring in the year, and everything was so much brighter and better because until that day, I couldn't remember the last time I had really been happy. It was the start to my recovery.
I was in heaven last night with Scott at Dawson lake. On the way there he played Fat Lip by Sum 41 and I reveled in the stereotype of two teenagers singing its lyrics as we drove to look at the stars. I've always hated stereotypes because I highly value individuality, but my friends make me think maybe they aren't always so bad. When the line "the doctor said my mom should have had an abortion," came on, Scott and I simultaneously did the robot "A-BOR-TION" from one of our favorite vines. We went back to the same parking lot we went to last time to look at the stars, and even though I liked Jenna being there last time, I think it was even better just the two of us. There was a full moon, so it was a little too bright to see the stars at their full capacity, but they were amazing all the same. We decided on a few minutes of silence to close our eyes and not feel the pressure of appreciating the stars, but just to listen to the sounds. It was really amazing. I think I might focus too much on appreciating things other-worldly and not appreciating the things all around me. When I was holding Scott's hand, that's when I felt like I was in heaven. It wasn't anything romantic, but just holding the hand of someone I love so much was transporting.
I know I said that I believed in hell too, but I think I'm going to keep this chapter positive and go into hell in another one.
Heaven is real, and sometimes it exists in other people.
