LEWISTON – A year ago, Hillary Groves would have found walking unbearable.

Her best friend was gone, the victim of suicide. Hillary, 14 at the time, was clinically depressed and dabbling in drugs. She dropped out of school, got into legal trouble and sank into despair.

“Once she passed away, I felt as if I couldn’t go on, like I wasn’t human anymore,” said Hillary, now 16. “Being a teenager is hard; losing a friend is harder.”

Eventually, Hillary cast off the weight of depression. And now she walks.

This weekend, the Mechanic Falls girl will join millions of others in an overnight walk called Out of the Darkness, an event organized by the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention.

For Hillary, the walk has many purposes. It helps raise money for suicide prevention awareness. It reminds her of where she once was and where she is now.

And it helps her believe that the death of her friend Dakota was not in vain.

Dakota Cunneen, also of Mechanic Falls, was 15 when she hung herself at her home. The death stunned the community and left Hillary foundering, alone and confused.

“One day it just hit me. I was at her grave alone. I realized she was not coming back,” Hillary said. “I cried every day for a year. Guilt, confusion, angry, sad and depressed. When was it going to end? I just didn’t even want to face life any more.”

Hillary was a threat to take the same way out Dakota had. For a time, she was hospitalized for depression. She was no longer in school and she was using drugs.

“This was the way I was facing my life daily after she left,” Hillary said. “Legal problems, school problems, just simply problems everywhere.”

Hillary couldn’t identify one moment of epiphany when it all changed. Her way out of the darkness seemed more an evolutionary process as the loss of her friend slowly became a source of inspiration.

“One day it came to me, a little over a year of her passing on,” Hillary said. “I know she wouldn’t want me to live my life this way. I was looking at a scrapbook and found a picture of her, our friends and I. I started to remember memories of ‘us.'”

Dakota was gone but in spite of the circumstances that had driven her to suicide, Hillary said her friend had imparted lessons on how to rise above the pain and problems of being a teenager. Those lessons that Dakota ultimately did not heed herself, Hillary would.

“She was a straight-up girl and taught me not to be run over in life,” Hillary said. “She taught me to live each and every day to our fullest and make it last. You never know what tomorrow will bring.”

Dakota, dead a year and a half now, had one final lesson to impart.

“She inspired me to help others,” Hillary said.

That inspiration led to her participation in the Out of the Darkness walk. In Maine, it takes place Sunday, Sept. 7, on the Back Cove in Portland. With each step of the walk, Hillary will be one step further from gloom and one step closer to the memories of Dakota that she wants to keep.

“We shared many memories, smiles, tears and laughs,” Hillary said. “But most of all, we shared a friendship that will always be remembered.”