Not Meant for this World: My Near Death Experiences: a true story

I was born purple. I was born my favorite color because I came into this world wearing my umbilical cord for a necklace. My mom said it was because even when in the womb, I was doing pirouettes. On the day I was born, I barely weighed five pounds. I was not premature, but right on time. To this day I do not like wearing things around my neck (chokers, turtlenecks…). On September 19, 1981, my first day in this world, I had my first near-death experience. It would not be the last.
I don’t remember the day of my birth. But I do remember sitting on the bottom of my grandmother’s swimming pool 3 years later, watching as if watching a movie, and seeing my dad dive in and scoop me up out of the water. I remember I was wearing a little pink bikini. I don’t know how I got into the pool, but I remember looking up from the bottom, seeing the glistening lights at the top (which was probably the sun glinting off the water) and it seemed like I was down there for a really long time. I remember being afraid to go under water at all after that, and being afraid of the dark shadows in the deep end of the pool. To this day I have a fear of drowning. Sometimes I have dreams about being under water, and I wake up out of breath and gasping for air.
My next near-death experience occurred at the age of 13. This near-death experience was self-inflicted, as I was going through a clinical depression. I’m almost ashamed to admit that I tried to take my own life. For months I had saved up dozens of pills, including my sister’s Ritalin, my mom’s birth control pills, sleeping pills I found in the medicine cabinet…I took the pills one night and I slit my wrist several times. I did it the right way too. When I woke up in the hospital I was almost embarrassed to be alive. Embarrassed because I did not accomplish what I set out to do.
After that incident, I saw a therapist for a few years (and I tried many anti-depressants, most of which did not work. I was on prozac for almost 10 years, and I went off of it myself because it was not doing anything for me, aside from giving me really bad side-effects. During the course of my therapy I discovered what I wanted to do with my life, my purpose: psychology. I read voraciously anything on the subject that I could get my hands on.
That’s when I became fascinated with near-death experiences, and when I found out the reason for my aversion to watches: Time. Duh! The symbolism is so apparent I could not believe I never noticed it before. All my life, every watch I have ever worn has stopped, after being worn on my wrist for a few hours. At first I blamed the batteries. I’ve gone through many batteries and many different kinds of watches over the years, and have gotten the same results.
Now I believe that my here is limited, that I was not meant to be in this world for too long. I think that’s why I love having my picture taken. How the photographer grants my image eternal life, and makes time stand still by pushing a button. I am not afraid of death. I’m okay with it. I just want to accomplish all my goals before I go.
Things were going pretty smoothly (no more NDE’s) until I turned 21. It was then that decided I wanted to go on a birth control pill. I didn’t even have a boyfriend at the time, I just thought it would be neat to be able to skip my period for special occasions or whenever I didn’t feel like getting it.
I paid little attention to the warning pamphlet that came with the pills. Never in a million years could those “rare side effects