We DO get better.

I hate it when life gets to me, when people, and situations, fears, and smiles get to me. I hate it when I feel like I do now. When I feel almost a little less hopeless than yesterday. Yesterday I smiled. Yesterday I had no worries. yesterday I played "crazy-8" and drank wine, laughing my ass off. Today looks a little different. Tonight is different. Tonight life reminded me my fighting is in vain. Tonight I know what 121 million people around the world goes through. I understand a little what could be swimming around in the minds of the 2/3 young people who never seek treatment for this.

Tonight I'm not only feeling for those battling depression. I don't sympathize, nor do I empathize. Tonight I'm there myself. Tonight hangs heavy above me. I feel like giving up. I feel screwed. I feel either way, no matter what you choose, you're still screwed. That feeling sucks. You won't know it until you've been there. 

It's so difficult to walk up to a friend and share the heaviness cos sometimes you don't know where it came from. Sometimes it's easy to point the cause of this, and other times you can't, and tonight I don't know what it is. And this thing forces us to be alone, by ourselves, to feed us guilt, unworthiness, rejection. And many times, we fall for this lie. When we're alone, we're vulnerable, susceptible to all kinds of negativity. Often, we want to hear that negativity. But we don't have to. There IS a way out. We can overcome this. We are stronger than this. We weren't designed for this. We were meant to be more than this. We are more than this. We have to stop feeding ourselves the lie that things will stay this way. It will not. Things DO get better. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow either, but like I said, "its no surprise that just after every winter, flowers begin to blossom, such is our lives.

StayAliveFriends

We are yellow

Have you ever been so happy and over-joyed that you wanna see a million balloons rocketing into space? Maybe it’s your birthday, or wedding, an anniversary, a 1^st place. Balloons are symbolic to fun. It’s symbolic to expressing joy, and goodness, and jolliness. Have you ever seen a balloon at a funeral? Or at a deathbed? You don’t see that.

StayAliveFriend is an attempt to shout back at those stigmas. We are dedicated to present hope and healing, and life, and meaning to your story, because we believe in stories. We exist to stare loneliness and depression, and cutting, and fear, and suicide in the face and tell them they’re no longer welcome in our stories. We have befriended hope.

 We believe that your story deserves to be heard, and appreciated. Your story, broken as it may be, is worthy of a balloon, a yellow one. Your story of pain, cutting, addiction, rejection, it’s yours. And it’s worth listening to because it carries weight, and it needs to be celebrated, with balloons. Your story deserves a standing ovation from a million balloons rocketing into space.

September 9 and 10 is World Suicide Prevention Day and it is marked by yellow, because yellow speaks of hope. Yellow speaks of a second chance. Yellow says we’re all bright lights who sometimes forget to shine. StayAliveFriend will remind everyone of us who have struggled with any of those ugly elephants, and also those who are still battling depression, cutting, addiction, loneliness: YOU ARE YELLOW. YOU ARE BRIGHT AND SHINING. YOU ARE NOT ALONE.

We will be teaming up with a church, Helderbaai Gemeente, in the Strand area in their annual Lentefees weekend. The Friday night will be an evening of music, with Glaskas and Die Seisoen Na Somer. StayAliveFriend will share our story, which is actually your story as well. The Saturday will be a day of fun and games, but it will also be the day where we’ll shout out to a friend, family member, stranger who’s battling depression, suicide, addiction. We will shout out to them with yellow helium-filled balloons, inscribed StayAliveFriend, together with the person’s name whom you’re shouting out to. We will be brave enough to walk around with it for the whole day, remembering our friends, remembering hope, healing, and most of all, remembering our shine. When the sun goes down, and the stars appear, we will release our balloons in memory of........HOPE, because we are all meant to shine

The Spill Canvas

“If you let me catch a ride on your road to recovery you can fall apart on me because I’ll be here as long as it takes; a remedy to steady your midnight shakes. I’ll stay here as long as it takes. As long as it takes to get it right.” 

The Spill Canvas is “one of those bands” for me. They deepened my love and appreciation for music. They changed things for me. And when they announced an “indefinite hiatus” my heart sank. This song is one of their more recent ones but it means so much to me. I first heard this song after finding out my friend had been struggling with addiction. I couldn’t shake the feeling that a lot of people have been exactly where I was in that moment, learning for the first time about a battle someone they loved had been fighting.

The beginning of the song talks about watching someone go through the beginning stages of addiction. ”I was watching when you lost direction and I saw you when the headlights died. You were standing at the edge of a train wreck, twisted up inside.” The beginning stages of addiction often go unnoticed. Sometimes a person starts to act a bit different but the picture doesn’t become clear until later on. For me, I simply saw subtle changes in my friend but didn’t suspect anything major. 

The song goes on to say, “I tried to find you in your pitch black bedroom. I tried to find you in the place you hide, but your body was an empty suitcase, hollow sunken eyes.” After things had become glaringly different, I kept trying to seek them out to find out what was going on. I didn’t know exactly what was going on until they finally told me. Suddenly everything made sense. At first I felt guilty for having been angry and not noticing what was going on, but I made it clear that I would be there, no matter what.

If you have a friend who is struggling with addiction please don’t give up on them. They need you, even if they say they don’t. Be there to listen, offer encouragement and understanding. Provide them with resources to get help. Addiction is a difficult path to walk and someone struggling needs others to walk with them on the journey. 

The Pain is our Teacher

A while ago I posted a blog on http://ivorswartz.blogspot.com/2010/07/people-matters.html about a dear friend of mine who went through a particular rough time in her life. I thank God she's at a much better place. I wrote about how she used to feel worthless, and sometimes still do, and how she used to cut herself to forget her pain.

Through grace, this friend is smiling again; through grace this friend can look pain in the eyes and say,"I've been there, I know that". And I'm proud of this friend. She makes me smile when I look at her. She makes me believe that what StayAliveFriend is doing, means something, and it's worth giving a shot.

Recently, this friend went with a group from our college on a ministry trip to Morreesburg for a couple days, visiting schools and orphanages in the area. She had the opportunity to lead a class discussion with a group of 9th-graders. This is her story:

Nedien and I had to lead a class group-discussion at a grade 9 class. I was very skeptical about it, seeing as though I don't like standing in front of people to talk.
Nedien started to speak to them, but they were very disrespectful towards us and were talking the whole time in between. After she spoke for a while, I felt like I should share my story with them.I told them a short part of my story and what I went through. How I'm struggling with depression and used to cut myself.
Then Nedien did a brave thing and asked if any of them has ever cut themselves. Instead of raising their hands if they did, they pointed to one of their classmates. They started insulting the boy about his problem and how bad it is. My heart broke for him. I wanted to cry because I knew exactly how he felt at that moment. People are sometimes so uncomfortable with their own pain that the only way to hide and deal with it is to make fun of other people's pain.


 The boy just sat there, absorbing every insult thrown at him.


We started to tell them about StayAliveFriend and how it helped me through my dark times. It helps to know that there are people I can talk to about my things.


I later on spoke to a girl sitting in the front row. She said her sister suffers also from depression and cutting, and she drinks a lot. Although her sister is "clean" now, she still doesn't know how to handle the situation, especially now that her sister confessed that she's lesbian. Her family has rejected her.


The evening we had a production in their hall and most of the class we spoke to was there. After the show they came sheepishly up to me, confessing that they also cut themselves and would love to talk about it. I was surprised, as they were the one who made fun of their classmate. One girl in particular came to me and spoke about how her step dad is so violent; that she can't handle it and has no one to share it with, so she start cutting herself and want to stop it.


For the first time I felt like God was truly on the move inside of me. It felt like my pain is serving it's purpose; like I didn't g through all that crap for nothing. God is using it for His purpose.


It felt like The Pain Was My Teacher.

"Get over your shit"..is it THAT simple?

this is in response to a FOOL who thinks pain and scars are "shit to just get over with":

Have you ever noticed how different people become when they went through some sort of difficult stage in their lives? They change completely, which is a good thing. Maybe they've been hurt in a previous relationship but stepped out of it and has found real and true love. Maybe they had to quite their old jobs to become the successful entrepreneur they've always wanted to be. Maybe where the scars of their self-injury were, a beautiful tattoo can be seen.It is a beautiful thing to witness broken people being changed.

Maybe you were rape and molested as a child, but grace has been poured out on you. Thinking what your life could've been like hadn't it been for people who showed you what love looks like when all you've known was pain. People who put up with you; prayed with you; sat with you; people who called you beautiful.

And then life has this funny way of putting people on you path who has gone through the exact things you went through. People who are where you were at couple years back. They are hurting where only you knows cos you've been there. They are crying and you know exactly what it feels like. This is familiar to you. They don't need to show you the scars cos you know where to find it.

But what happens if you have forgotten all that? What happens when you're healed and there's no reason to look back. What happens if grace and compassion doesn't smell as sweet as it used to? What happens if you have forgotten what it smells like?
And the next time someone comes to you who's at the place of your past you tell them to get over their shit? Really? Get over your shit? Is it THAT simple? Moreover, was it THAT simple for you? Did you call it shit?

I hope that at some point you'll understand that we deal with our stuff differently, and we're okay with it. God is okay with it. In fact, He is right there saying,"hey, you're beautiful with your shit. I don't care what they say, your shit is precious, and whenever you're ready, in your time, you and I will work on a way to do away with it for good".

THAT is what grace and compassion looks like.

Broken and Healed

BrokenHearted

For you;For me;For them;For us...

I believe we all want to be part of something. We all want to hear, at some point, that what we think and believe, and feel, matters to others. We want our voices to be heard. We want people to notice and acknowledge our effort; our hard work, or what we meant to them. We want to belong.

StayAlive is creating a  platform for us, them, they, we, everyone to have their stories told and heard. We believe that your voice SHOULD be heard. We believe that what you have on your head, and what you hold in your heart is yours and NO ONE should tell you that it carries no weight, or that it doesn't matter, because it does matter, a lot.

We want to invite anyone with a story of hope, and healing to write it in a poem, a song, a short story, a video, anything, email it to ivor-swartz@live.nl and we'll make it part of our undocumented story nights. We'll  keep it anonymous unless you want your name published.

We all have a story, ad someone out there longs to hear something that connects to theirs.....

StayAliveFriend