When life gives you lemons, be grateful they aren't rotten

You are luckier that you could ever know. When life gives you lemons, be grateful they aren't rotten. And still after all that, if life gets you down, read this and know you actually have it pretty damn good :)

I am healthy.

I'm in top condition for a seventeen year old.

I exercise frequently, (my vocal chords mostly) and I eat as well as I can (when chocolate isn't around).

But until this month, I used to smoke, Drink, Drug it out and whatever else.

I drank pretty solidly every weekend, sometimes throughout the week, and none of my friends could top me. I smoked constantly; and still do, but much fewer. My fingers itch if they are without a cigarette between them and I used to crave one 24-7. I also dabbled in the occasional drug or two. Or three.

I say this with confidence, not because I am proud of what I did. Never.

I say this because but I I'm ashamed of every word of it. Ashamed of who I had once let myself become. And no one deserves that.

I've faced hard times in my life. Very hard times. I've seen a dear sibling die, my father depressed, punch-ups between me and friends, my bruises, my black-eyes, my whole family nearly fall apart. It haunted my dreams at night and my conscience during the day. I thought no one cared and no one listed to me. Why would they?

So I fell back on drinking, smoking and drugging. I'm no better teenager for it; there's nothing to ever miss out in by not engaging in it.

I used to resort to these things when life in general got me down. They were great for the time being and help for the moment, but drugs ware off, the hangover lingers, the lighter's empty after three days and you've finished countless packets.

There are those times when there is nothing materialistic that can do anything to help ease the pain. And that pain grows so much all you can do is go into your room and vent. You tare up your posters and pull the nails out of the floorboards. You rip out chunks of your hair and kick your cloths over the floor. You break your CD collection, pull pages out of your favorite books. You smash your guitar over the bed as hard as you can and light a cigarette. And then another.

You Can't sleep at night, your dreams a repetition of the day and the agony that went with each step of the way. You break china in the kitchen and cut your hands secretly with the shards in the toilet, as if the sharp sting would take away the pain of everything else.

Then you can't eat. Sometimes you ignore hunger, sometimes you just aren't hungry.

Sometimes, you feel so much at a loss, all you want to do is just die. You want to dig a hole, lay yourself in it and bury your disgusting being alive. Sickeningly, you almost LONG for the feeling of suffocation. You long to suffocate the tormenting world out of your mind.

There is nothing left to live for. No real friends you can trust, No family you feel will listen of you tell a secret to them.

You are alone.

You walk down the road, wondering how to do it-to actually end your life. You've tried before, and failed.

You cut a long crescent moon into your wrist and watched as your life began to bleed away between your fingers. You told yourself it was what you wanted, what you'd longed for. But as a cold swept over you, and the colour began to drain from your body, you stopped. You held your wrist tightly and screamed. Screamed for all you were and all you could have been.

You chickened out. You failed.

Again.

Its back to walking down the road, once again thinking of how to do it. How to do it in a way you can't back out of. A way in which you can just get on with it and trick yourself. Once you've stated, there's no going back.

You could stand in front of a train.

Or a car.

You could tie yourself to a tree by your fragile neck.

You jump from a bridge.

But someone comes up from behind you.

"Hey!" they say. "Hey where have you BEEN? I've missed you so much! Where HAVE you been the last few days? I've tied CALLING and you never answered, I've come to your DOOR and you never answered. I've been out of breath wandering the STREETS for you! I was so SICK with worry!"

They let out a breath of relief and then, then they give you a hug; enveloping your cold body in warmth and safety. They hug you like they mean it. And they do.

You stop and find yourself hugging back without meaning to, it's like a trigger reaction.

And you cry. You cry freely.

Not because you am sad for yourself, but because you ares thinking of the other people. You think of all those people who are dying of things like lung cancer from smoking and from drug or alcohol overdoses. Dying when they have a family who loves them and needs them, even if they don't say it as often as the should, or want to. Dying when they have small children, or big children, a new house, a dog, a career, a wife, a husband and a baby on the way.

And you think of how they want so much to live, and would give so much to be alive and healthy. And you have that. You have what they want and can not have, yet you a willing to throw it away like it is not worth anything.

But it is worth more to both of us than we can ever know. More than anyone can ever know. You and I, when we feel that hug we are given and think of how lucky we are to be feeling it, we can not even begin to comprehend just how privileged we are to be on the planet. Uncountable sperm die in the uterus, and only YOU made it. You alone. Think of those sick people who are dying, and think of those millions and billions of microscopic people that died for you. Realize the amazing gift you have been given.

I think of how many reasons I have to be here and lucky I am to be alive.

How so very DAMNED lucky I am.