Suicide: Response to a facebook post.

Those of us who use Facebook realise that it allows us to share and receive information from across the globe. Some of this can be uplifting whilst others can be upsetting.  
I read a story about someone that had taken their own life. 

The following is what I wrote in response to that story

"We are not encouraged enough to show when we are crumbling. When we are vulnerable and need help. Sometimes we wait until we 'fix up ' before we share not knowing that is in the sharing we are healed. I've been to that place where contemplating taking my life seemed an 'easy' way out. But I'm here stronger for coming through those times. I'm learning to be more accepting of me and where I am in life. Sometimes all I needed was someone to listen. Why does that seem so hard to find? I didn't need you to fix it although I thought you might. But I learnt that people who truly listen are few and far between. I needed someone to really listen as my soul cried out. I cried out to let go of the pain, the disappointments, the yearnings, the fears, the uncertainties, the rejection and the questions. It felt soul destroying. It felt lonely. I felt unloved and scared. But here I am. Knowing that I have passed through this moment in time to be led to greater things. I know this..... It passed and I survived. I am a survivor and always will be. My children have watched their mother healing. What better gift can I give to them than to let them know that they came from this (me)? Now it was scary. No let me rephrase that. Sometimes it was terrifying. I felt like I took them on a journey they didn't ask to go on. It was hard to choose the right things to say and to measure how honest I could be. I found a space and person to share the most difficult stuff with. A place where I could practise answering their questions and a place to cry when it didn't always go according to plan. But as I said earlier: I am a survivor (shared more than I intended but felt led). Be blessed who needed to hear this." extract from facebook comment September 2014

I shared were I was.  

Last week I meant a woman who told me of an incident that happened to her recently. She was at a train station when she noticed a young man standing too close to the edge of the platform. The station was a little crowded but people could see he was near the edge. Whilst no one approached him she walked up to him and touched his arm and said "I  think you should step back a bit.  You are too close to the edge,  when the train comes you might have an accident or fall off". He turned looked at her and burst into tears.  She held his arm and walked him away from the edge of the platform and nearer to the wall. Whilst she listened he spoke. When he had finished she said that she  asked him to look up to the sky and explained that today the weather was overcast and grey and that tomorrow if they met at this same station that the sky would still be here.  It might be a sunny day or it might be raining but the same thing would be true:  the sky would be here. She said that he turned to her and said that he was contemplating taking his life and this was why he'd stepped so close to the edge of the platform, He cried when she had touched him because he  felt he was invisible and her touch had made he realised that she had seen him. He said that he thought that nobody cared.  But she saw him. She touched him. Today was not the day he would be taking his life. 

He wasn't to know that she had recently completed a training course preparing  her to deal with those who called the Samaritan help line ( a 24 hour hotline that vulnerable  people call when they are feeling desperate or thinking of taking their own life). The course had heightened her awareness but she sensed something was not right and felt the need to reach out and just tell this person that they needed to step back.  She actually saved his life that day. Just by paying attention.  Nothing big.  She didn't bring him home. He wasn't begging for a few coins to be put in his cup. He wasn't singing, dancing or seeking attention. He thought he was invisible and that no one saw him. He felt that he didn't count. He felt that he did not matter. The reality here is that so many of us rush around, stare at our mobile phones, read books and push newspapers up into our faces so that we do not look at the people in front or to the side of us. Sometime all it takes is a smile but that can be too hard so we avoid all forms of contact. You know I'm guilty of these same things too! 

Sometimes we have to just take time out of our day to say hi. Connect.

 It might just save someone’s life.  

I've nothing frilly to say or add.

  Just connect and maybe save

Someone’s life