CJ, you've probably already heard this from me that Caleb once said to me that he would never fit into this world in any other way but as a hated being--this is his heartbreaking description:"I'm a high school drop out, mentally ill, a drug addict, and now I'm a felon." His death followed that statement. And that alone is why I joined Bluelight and why I stay and try to help this community that gave him respite from that reality, and will continue to stay until either it or I die: because so many people are made to feel like this. No one, especially no young person, deserves to be disrespected and worse, persecuted, for struggling with life. Life is fucking hard. According to the new DSM-5 we pretty much all have a mental illness. We all self-medicate through the madness. I would be a felon several times over had I gotten caught with what Caleb got caught with: a pocket-full of LSD. (It was not schedule 1 back when I was his age). As far as school? I went to shitty ones all the way through until university. But this community let him be everything he was, his list was out in the open here but he could still be seen for being kind, being smart, being funny, being completely sane. You are so right on to reject that shit and make sure not one shred of it ever gets a permanent home in your head.
I know you as an extremely kind and thoughtful person. You are so right that is worth more than the stupid things that people put such misplaced value on (like how successful you look).
