Dresses, ice cream and tears. .. wanted to add a sentence, but apparently I had more to say

Today I went grad dress shopping with a group of people. It was really awesome! I dont think it was my idea but I pushed for it to happen so I feel kinda like I organized it. Which is cool. Everyone had fun.
Repeatedly I flashed back to previous grades, as far back as grade 8, when my friends and I would frequently peak into dress stores, occasionally venturing to go inside and gape at the pretty gowns. I remember my sister's prom dress quite clearly from two years ago. Last year I was swarmed with descriptions of excited grade twelves' new dresses and even had a taste of it as I bought a simply purple dress for my boyfriend's (at the time) grad. My chest began to swell with deep satisfaction as I sat in the dressing room, watching the girls spin around in bright puffy dresses, eyes sparkling at the glamour of graduating. Dreams of the celebrations to come cleared the air of stress, pain and the dullness of everyday life. It was our turn. I had made it. I felt the swiftness of time passing me by and my eyes filled with tears. I thought this day would never come. I suppose subconsciously I thought I would be forever imprisioned in a dark and meaningless routine. I felt like a passenger on a train winding its way down a blackened dead end tunnel; burning all fuel as an attempt to escape the blackness until painfully crashing into the end of the line. As if I was staring at the window into the bleak stones until today when the darkness opened up to rolling hills leading to the ocean - the train found its exit.
As I looked at the ear to ear grin on my friends face and felt it mirrored on my own I involuntarily thought back to all those nights that I wanted to give up. Those nights when I tried to strangle myself, held knives to my wrists, or swallowed a bottle of pills. I remember lying in bed thinking my life was literally finally over. I remember balling on the phone trying to tell my friend I was going to die. I remember the struggle to carry on and the desire for death. I remember, I remember, I remembered. I realized I've made it. I've made it through high school. I'm in the final years of my teens. It's almost over. I did it. I got through.
I know, I KNOW its not quite over yet. I know that life is full of challenges. I know. I'm just finally past the first step.
In that store, obsessing over graduation, I was overwhelmed with how far I've come. The excitment in that room, the excitment I imagined to come in 10 months, and the excitment about life overwhelmed me. It hit me how differently I view life now. Some things that I thought I would have to endure forever are just a part of the past now. What I used to think was life, was just a caged up ball of confusion. That's not life. When people died, when I was having a bad day, when I was in pain, people would tell me that that's just a part of life. Unfortunately I got the wrong idea. I began to believe that WAS life. I was so wrong.

Yes, pain is a part of life, but a small part compared to everything else it has to offer. Compared to the love and beauty in life, pain is small. If I could only have believed sooner that the 'huge' amount of pain I was feeling was tiny in comparison to everything else life has to offer, things would have been much easier. I was just too small minded and hopeless to believe in so much good.

This has taken me quite some time to type out, but it was all felt in a matter of about a minute. I felt like crying at how lucky I was to know all that now and I felt like crying at how close I was to never having the chance. Then I felt like crying for those who never did get the chance.

My eyes swelled for Kayla, who did see the beauty of life and love through all her radiation, kemo, pain and other challenges. My heart ached for Acacia, who did not see the beauty. I know how lucky I am, how lucky we are, that we've made it this far.