Don't Fall Down

     My sister has been my best friend since the day I was born. She has been there through thick and thin. She has protected me from bullies, danger, and scary movies. She sings Celine Dion off key and at the top of her lunges with me in the car. She laughs at my stupid jokes and makes up stupid jokes with me.

See, my sister is my best friend. So when she went off to college I missed her a lot. She wasn’t there when I came home from school. I wouldn’t see her in the halls at school. And I wouldn’t be able to knock on my bedroom wall to tell her I needed her. For the first time in my entire life I was alone. Or I felt like I was alone. To add to my sister leaving there was some leadership changes in my youth ministry going on at the same time that did not go smoothly. The changes left me feeling angry and unwanted.

So I started feeling sad. It was September 11, 2006. I thought it was just the day and the heavy history behind it that was making me sad but when I got up on the 12^th I felt the same sadness. Then I felt it on the 13^th, and the 14^th, and the 15^th, and then it wouldn’t go away. I felt like I was falling down this deep dark hole and I kept falling and the hole kept getting deeper and darker. And I stopped seeing the light and I kept being sad and lonely and angry.

I couldn’t stop feeling all these things. They wouldn’t go away. I was desperate not to feel any of them. I was tired of feeling sad, lonely, and angry. I was desperate to feel anything but those feelings.

One day I turned on the water way to hot. So hot you could see steam coming off the water. After the initial burn I realized for that second I didn’t feel anything at all. I felt numb. So I started doing that when I would feel overwhelmed with sadness, loneliness, or anger. I would burn my hands. And for that moment I didn’t feel anything. And feeling nothing was better then anything I had been feeling.

Soon enough burning my hands wasn’t enough and I started to think I wasn’t needed anymore. I started thinking that the only way to stop these feelings was to go to bed and never wake up. I would walk by the medicine cabinet and think,

“What would happen if I took everything inside here?” “Would I go to sleep and not wake up?” “Would all this pain go away if I just swallowed a bunch of pills and never woke up?’

I started to scare myself and I eventually took the scissors out of my room and hid them from myself. I also avoided looking at the medicine cabinet when I went into the kitchen.

One night I was laying on the floor in my room desperately looking for a feeling of anything else (in all honesty I was thinking of different ways to kill myself) when a song stopped me in my tracks. I had my iPod on shuffle and I know that in that moment God took control of it. Over the speakers came the song Concrete Girl by Switchfoot. The lyrics rang out of the speakers like the most beautiful sound ever made on Earth.

“Concrete girl, don’t fall down. In this broken world around you, don’t fall down my concrete girl.”

I started the song over and let the words soak in. I played it over and over again. I decided that was not the night to end it all and that I could make it to tomorrow. And I did. I made it to the next day and I listened to the song over and over and I wrote the lyrics, “don’t fall down,” on my hand. So every time I felt hopeless at school I could look down at my hand, take a breath, and keep going. It was helping. The song was getting me through the days and eventually just listening to any Switchfoot song would help keep me going. Hearing Jon Foreman’s voice was peaceful and calming.

On March 30,2006 Switchfoot was playing a show in Orlando. That night Jon Foreman was photographed wearing a black shirt with white writing. The writing said “To Write Love On Her Arms.” Like everyone else who saw the picture I thought it was some new band but it wasn’t. A few days after that show Switchfoot posted on their MySpace about what the shirt. All the post said was that their friend Jamie had written a story and that everyone should go read it so I did.

The story called, To Write Love On Her Arms, was about a girl named Renee who was suffering from depression, self-injury, addiction, and thoughts of suicide. I couldn’t believe was I was reading, that this was really a story, that someone had written about these things. People don’t write stories about that kind of stuff and people certainly don’t talk about this kind of stuff. But someone did. Jamie Tworkowski wrote about his friend Renee Yohe, a real person going through all these things. I saw myself in Renee, I understood her story.

So I printed off the story and put it in a fold to carry around at school. I wrote, “don’t fall down,” on my hand and I wrote, “love” on my wrist. When it all got to be to much I would look at my hand, then my wrist, listen to Concrete Girl, and read the story. When I was at school I would recite the lyrics and certain lines from the story in my head. And as the days went on and I would write on my hand and wrist and listen to the song and read the story it got easier. Getting up got easier as did going to school and coming home. I started to see the light where there was none and the deep dark hole started to seem less dark and deep.

I started to climb out and the first day of my senior year I was completely out and miles away. I made it through. It wasn’t easy and it wasn’t fun but I did it with the help of Switchfoot, TWLOHA, my youth group, and my best friend Ericka. All of who have never given up on me.

 Ericka, Gretchen, and I meeting Jamie. 2008

 Mama and I with Switchfoot April 2012 in Oklahoma City (concert 21)

        I am perfectly fine with people teasing or thinking my "obsession" with Switchfoot is ridiculous. I'm okay with you not liking their music but please know that they truly mean the world to me. That they literally saved my life. They pulled me from the edge when I was preparing myself to fall over. I can say in all honesty that they are the reason I am alive today. That is why I will continue to listen to their music and see them when they are in town. Not only because I love their music but because it is a small way for me to continue saying thank you to them for helping me live my life instead of end it. They have become wonderful friends and people that I look forward to seeing every time they are in town.