fourth.

I don't make good decisions.

The truth is as simple as that.  It's not always, and they're not always life-ruining decisions that I make, but every once in a while, I get myself into things so deep and so ridiculously...well, not good, that I think most people would look at me and ask "what the hell were you thinking?"  And usually, it's something like, "I thought it was a good idea at the time."

It was one of those "good idea at the time" situations that led me into a place I can only describe as Crazytown.

To most people, if a girl came up to them and said that she believed that there were other people inside her head, that she could switch between them at will and speak as them and have them take over her body, that would be a sign of a person who probably belongs in counseling, or maybe a hospital.  For me?  I thought she was awesome.

Already, I imagine people shaking their heads and cringing.  Maybe not, thinking I was five.  No.  I was fourteen, and instead of running like hell in the opposite direction, I decided, I want to try that too.

I created characters.  At least ten of them.  All with their own personalities, all very much involved with that other girl's.  It was like our own secret world.  We had long conversations, switching between them and talking about them like they were, well, real people.

I was fourteen years old and while I didn't believe that these characters were real, I was lucky.  I thought it was a game.

She thought it was real.

When she went to the hospital our sophomore year of high school, after running out of the cafeteria, shrieking "they won't let me leave!" I thought that was it.  That she'd come back, that she'd be done with it, and that we could be friends again, instead of some on-again, off-again, half-fictional relationship.

Of course, I was wrong.