12minutes! yikes. sorry :( if you click to see the whole RECord.. i'm including a transcription.. in case you'd rather read it for yourself.

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I was thirteen when we left Hawaii, my mom, dad, two sisters and myself. Trading in the sandy beaches, roaring Pacific waves and the gentle green mountain ranges of O’ahu for the land locked, concrete jungle of Omaha, Nebraska. Douglas County to be precise. The move was sudden, a whirlwind exodus to some unknown land. We had less than a week to pack up our lives and ship ourselves across the states. It was so last minute, that we hadn’t secured housing arrangements, which left us living in a Ramada Inn, for the first two weeks, cramped in a cookie cutter cubical that pumped recycled, lavender scented air. Eventually we found an apartment off South 42^nd Street. It was a small, first floor unit big enough for the five of us to live in but far too tiny for anyone to call it comfortable.

Moving to Omaha wasn’t a choice any of us made. It was a necessity. My little sister, suffered from a rare disease, which rendered some of her organs useless. Since birth, her life depended on intense medication, constant monitoring, and numerous machines. For several years her name sat idly on a transplant list and as her name slowly reached the top, doctors instructed us to make the move. It was something we had been expecting to come  but none other than god himself could have guessed when. She’d been on that list for YEARS and UNMC, the University of Nebraska Medical Centre, was the leading hospital in the world for that kind of surgery, actually at the time, they might’ve been the ONLY hospital to conduct that kind of transplant.

So we were there, in Nebraska. Waiting. Waiting for someone to die. Waiting for a spare body to come forth and gift new life to my sister.

In the mean time, I was enrolled at Omaha Central High School. This place was majestic. Huge, beautiful facilities, grounds reminiscent of campuses I’ve only ever seen on tv sitcoms and students who could’ve walked straight out of an A&F billboard. Tall, blond, blue eyed, fair skinned.. perfectly all American. and I stuck out like.. like a brown bushy haired Hawaiian. I wore hoodies over simple tank tops, surf shorts and rubber slippers. I didn’t care enough to brush my hair, and I couldn’t be bothered with make up. In a sea of primed beauties and proper young gentlemen, I clearly didn’t fit in. So, the library became my sanctuary. I skipped lunches to avoid those awkward glances that others were sure to place over me and dived head first into my studies. My grades were excellent and my parents were proud but as the days turned into weeks turned and weeks turned into months and so on, little bits of me grew lonelier and lonelier.

You’ve heard the phrase “fish out of water”? That’s what i was. I was so far from what I knew to be home. My friends. My beaches. The surf was my playground and my church rolled into one and I didn’t have it anymore. I was a drying fish, a dying fish. I began to slowly implode. Darkness became darker. Sadness, sadder. Fear and pain and self-pity magnified as well. It got to the point where I was practically invisible. I didn’t need to worry about people looking at me weirdly anymore, as they didn’t seem to see me at all. I learned to walk the steps without actually going anywhere. Smiled when I was expected to. Laughed when someone said something that might’ve warranted laughter. I was there but I wasn’t.

I became little more than a shadow of someone I use to be. Things carried on like this for quite a long time. I simply went through the motions of life but failed to find reason to actually live it. For the sake of my parents, who already had more than enough things to worry about, I put on a mask of what i thought a happy version of myself might’ve looked like. I created fictional friends so they’d believe I was okay. Like Lacy, who I modeled after one of the cool preppy girls in my Latin class. And there was Davin, too. I liked the thought of a handsome nerdy kid, so I made him up completely.

So, there I was. Spending time thinking up back stories to my non-existent friends as real life, living people wandered pass. There I was, swallowed in my own depression, actually, I don’t know what is and isn’t qualified as clinically depressed.. whatever you wanna call it, I was drowning in my own mundane sublevel reality. Wholly consumed by the nothingness i created.

As more time passed, summer came upon us and my sister successfully pulled through the first transplant. All seemingly fairing well with her, my dad and I went back to Hawaii, for the remainder of the summer, leaving my mom and two sisters in Omaha. By this point, I was already considerably numb to emotions. Going back to the islands wasn’t as exciting as I thought it’d be. My dad and I settled into our home again. He, dying to get back to work, spent his days away from the house. I rang friends, Hawaii friends, those friends I missed so dearly, hoping to reconnect with them. Most never responded, some who did were booked up with their new friends. And again, I was alone. Friends whom I spent so much time missing, had, as it turned out, not missed me at all.

The only person I could’ve turned to was my mom. But, I was in Hawaii. Where I thought I wanted to be. And she wasn’t here with me. So the darkness that had once gone dark.. somehow, managed to become darker still. And the weight of the stillness, the deafening sound of nothing, the shrill chill of emptiness began to break me. For the first time, my mind had accepted suicide as an acceptable option. I wrote draft suicide letters to my parents. I sorted through every possible weapon and drug combination available to me in the house. I planned times and places for each weapon of choice. I even went so far as to purchase large bags and tape to cover my mom’s furniture, in case i ended up choosing a messy way out.

Latter that day, with an assortment of pill bottles, knives, rope and a gun all resting beside me on the couch, I flipped the tv on to check for the following day’s forecast. Just as I did that, an infomercial flickered across the screen. Psychic readings over the phone. A PSYCHIC! Exactly what I needed. I wasn’t looking for much, as I’d already decided I was going to take my own life, but maybe this phone psychic could shed some light on how I die. You’d be surprised how difficult it is to choose your weapon.

Right, so I picked up the phone. Dialed the 1-900 number and it began ringing immediately. A woman answered. She asked if I was 18. I lied and said yes. She didn’t catch that lie. Which worried me, she was suppose to be psychic! Shouldn’t she know? Then she asked what she could do for me. Disenchanted by all her questions, I grumbled “I thought you were a fucking psychic. Why don’t you already know what I’m calling for?!” She started to laughed. I didn’t find it funny at all so I reiterated my frustration. “Fucking psychic my ass!” She laughed again! Then she replied “I’m all about fucking. But I ain’t no psychic. Honey, you dialed the wrong number, my name is Cindy and you called a sex line.”

Well I’ll be damned. I burst into laughter. Laughing so strong I fell to the floor and curled into fetus position to hold my self together, I struggled for breath, my cheeks ready to burst as blood rushed to redden my blushing cheeks and my eyes sore from the new crows feet forming in the corners.

Some how.. 2minutes on the phone with Cindy, and all my darkness lifted.

So I guess you could say… Phone sex saved my life.