As long as we’re sharing: No, I’ve never called 9-8-8, but I do not infrequently feel incapable of surviving one or another aspect of what is an objectively very good life. This weekend I took myself to the movies, twice, in an attempt to turn the volume down, if briefly, on an evil inner monologue. The flu comparison A.J. made in his call for check-ins makes sense to me: Sometimes you just wake up sick.

Below, members of our beloved community tell the experiences they’ve had calling, or not, that number at the bottom of your screen. —TSB Editor

Humiliated but Alive

By The Small Bow Family Orchestra

I’ve reached out to a crisis line a few times via text. From the bottom of a hole, feeling crushingly alone. It hurt so bad to exist. When live texting with someone, the conversation usually flows pretty fast. The times I used the crisis line, things moved much more slowly. It took a few minutes to connect with someone initially. Then, there were minute-long pauses between responses. 

I could have called someone, of course. But I couldn’t. Not someone I knew who loved me, not someone at a crisis center. The enormous shame enveloping me meant having to be hidden. I couldn’t imagine voicing these things at all. What I needed help holding was not a specific incident or circumstance that was causing me distress, it was the pronounced emotional reality of my abject worthlessness. 

Line by line, I texted it out. And the person at the other end reflected back my emotional truth without fueling it or attempting to fix it. They asked simple questions about what I was experiencing, and responded empathetically to my answers. This returned me to a state of pain that was not all encompassing but bearable. Between responses, I imagined the counselors texting with who knows how many other despairing people simultaneously. How did they do it? 

I wondered if the conversation’s slowness might be on purpose rather than a matter of insufficient funding. Inside the pauses, I was suspended on a thread stretched between me and another caring person, hanging still in the gentle acknowledgement of my not-horribleness and plain humanness. On dark nights, these half-hour exchanges allowed me to feel okay enough to go to bed and start again the next day, for which I’m profoundly grateful.

I tend to want to die when I’ve disappointed someone else beyond all reason. I can’t continue as I have been going, but I can’t let this other person down, and so the sign above the exit door suddenly becomes red and flashing urgent. The desire, and it is very much a desire, a lust, a passion, begins with long sleepless nights and the feeling of having a knife lodged firmly in my chest. It builds while I try to pretend everything is fine, until one night, always in the dark, I break. 

On this particular evening, I find myself driving through Pasadena considering which bridge to throw myself off of when I decide to call the suicide hotline.

Her voice is warm but clinical, she’s assessing. She asks about my life and then, the question: Do you have any kids? I’m childless both by choice and by chance, well used to the slightly sad look a woman receives when she says she doesn’t have children. The look manifests this time as a silence. When I say no, she stumbles, she doesn’t know what to say, who to tell me to live for. She’s grasping, trying to find a reason I should be alive but she can’t really think of one. I know I have to get off this call without sending a police squad after myself. My customer service voice kicks in. I don’t remember what I said, I only remember switching my voice to a soft, agreeable tone and promising to get help. I had never called before. I remember sitting in the dark afterwards thinking that I had raised the highest signal flag I could and even they couldn’t help. Maybe it worked that night, I drove home, humiliated but alive.

Last week my husband disappeared for 24 hours while we were on a trip out of state. He eventually called me, told me he’d made a mistake, asked me to come pick him up. The next morning, he refused to drive home with me. He told me he was done with life. He wanted to wander back out into the woods and drink himself to death over the course of a few days. He easily could, he binge drinks cheap vodka in secret and he’s had two cardiac incidents in less than a year due to alcohol poisoning. I sat down in front of the hotel door so he couldn’t get out and called 988. An hour later two social workers showed up to talk with him, found him too drunk to do an eval or even walk to my car, and called an ambulance. I ended up filing a title, having him held involuntarily for detox and in a psych facility for a couple of days. They lifted the title early because he is only suicidal when he relapses. And he did relapse within six hours of me picking him up. And he did present SI again. I don’t know if what I did was right or wrong. I only know that not only is this the worst thing I’ve ever experienced, it feels like the worst thing I’ve ever done. Not calling 988 but putting my husband under title. I don’t know what else I could’ve done and I hate that even more. I liked the relative peace of following my Al-Anon program: not asking questions, not taking away alcohol. But how am I supposed to respond when my suicidal husband is holding is a gallon of vodka?

I managed to get myself to the counseling building on campus, but the office was closed because it was a weekend. So at that point I decided I’d just go to the train tracks nearby. I sat there for a long time and ultimately realized I couldn’t do it that way — but that I’d definitely be able to down enough vodka to do it. I was getting up to leave to go to the liquor store when a friend called me. I guess in a way my attempt to go to the counseling office was my version of “calling 988.” But, in the end, what I needed was someone to call me.

My experience calling the suicide hotline comes about 15 years ago. I was in the depths of my hard drinking then, and after a night out where I felt completely chewed up, I decided to go for a walk near my house and call the hotline, and found a sympathetic ear on the other line. I remember sitting in a park near my house on a bench talking to a nice woman about my life when my phone died. When I walked back to my house I found the police there, they must have tied my number to my address. I explained to the cops that my phone had died, but they had their own protocol to follow, which was taking me to the hospital in my neighborhood. I tried to insist that everything was under control, but as I pleaded my case one of them drew their gun on me, told me to get my things out of my bedroom as he followed, and to get into the ambulance which had arrived. By now the lights and sirens had woken up my roommates who tried to explain to the police that they would take care of me to no avail. I remember the EMTs feeling bad for me. I got to the hospital, explained the situation to a nurse, who drew my blood and insinuated that someone would be back in a “little while” in a way that felt like a sign, and I slipped out a side door and walked back to my house about a mile away. Ten years later and sober, trying to clean up my finances and the pile of debt I had accrued, I bitterly paid off the ambulance bill — about 600 dollars. 

Where I’m from (outside the U.S.) the suicide hotlines will not turn you away immediately even if there is no immediate suicide opportunity. So, I have called them a couple of times in the past in that scenario. I will say they did pick up pretty quickly. And, they were pretty empathetic at the same time moving things along. Yes, they asked me the assessment questions, I knew how to answer them to move past those questions quickly. They did sit on the phone with me a bit to help immediately regulate my emotions. They probably referred me to some resources. If I recall correctly the call was maybe 15-20 minutes. I don’t recall getting the bum’s rush or anything but if memory serves there’s a point at which they start to wind up the call.

I have also called warm lines (non-suicidal lines). They can take (much) longer to answer. Limit is about 20 minutes although they always tell you you can call back. Overall these lines serve a purpose but it’s disappointing that this is where we are with the provision of health care. They help engage me for about 20 minutes or whatever. Over time, I noticed calling these lines would have less and less of a good feeling after a call, and the return to emptiness is very quick.

I wouldn’t hesitate to call them again, but I also know what they are able to deliver and not deliver.

Nowadays, I’d be more likely to hit a virtual 12-step meeting. Probably because I’m more in need of connection, than what these lines seem to actually offer. But I’m still glad the lines are there.

When the moldy weeds of my interior life grew too winelogged and rootbound to remain contained, I tried to explain my broken terracotta heart to my people. I had no practice needing emotional help, and the version of me willing to reach out had no understanding of timing or

inappropriate trauma dumping. I heard concern and compassion. I received Venmos for capitalistic self-care. Eventually, they stopped answering. Eventually, my partner dropped me off at a friend’s farm to dry out. Eventually, I called 988.

I remember it was a sunny day — my feet up on the wall among the post-it notes I’d written to inspire self-control. I was combative, in denial, and quite sad. I tried to think of the volunteer who answered. Who chose to spend their time waiting for calls like mine. I wanted to know what happened to land them where most couldn’t go.

The guy on the other end of the line was patient, he had a sense of humor. He was not put off by my attempt to come across as not like the other drunks. If his script had a break-out answer for what to say when someone denies being able to think of something worth living for, he wasn’t reaching for it. Ultimately, we landed on tomatoes (it was summer upstate).

When I hung up, I felt victoriously unfixed, and I continued to drink. I didn’t call back that day, but I did finally fall asleep. For years, I stumbled in and out of sobriety. And yet, when finally faced with no way out but rehab or turning tricks at a truck stop, I chose rehab. I’d learned that there are people who can handle real pain without panic — people who for some unknown reason learned tools to help.

I learned quickly that many therapists and psychiatrists are more scared of liability than helping patients with suicidal ideation, so I kept silent about mine for years. Three years ago I was having very vivid thoughts and told my therapist for the first time. I was sent a form to sign waiving any liability if I completed suicide from that point forward. I signed the form and never talked about it again. 

Why did I call a hotline this year? I was in shambles. My depression had completely taken over my brain and thinking. I wanted it to go away and suicide was unfortunately part of that. My only options were to call a hotline or go to the ER. I called the hotline and it was both what I expected and not. The person on the other end listened and was empathetic. They didn’t try to offer solutions, but did ensure that I wasn’t in danger. Afterwards I realized that I needed to talk about how I was feeling and not necessarily to be talked out of committing the act. 

Crisis can look very differently for different people; for me, it was feeling like I had no one to listen to me besides myself. I haven’t had those thoughts since. They will likely come back, as they do, and I will not hesitate to call the hotline again. 

I haven’t used 988. Not for lack of faith in its effectiveness, I’ve shared it as a resource and added it to safety plans. It reminds me how recovery groups didn’t cross my mind the first three times I tried to get sober. “I can handle this alone,” is a belief I hold on to.

Suicide’s occurred in my family generationally. The idea has chased me l since I was a kid. My thoughts are mostly passive, injuries superficial. What helps me (like sobriety) is creating distance between thought and action. Blasting music in my headphones. Taking an aimless walk on a different route. Stepping back behind the subway platform barriers. Some of my lowest moments were met with chance. Responding honestly to a friend’s text and agreeing to go for a safe, cold-water swim with him. Answering the phone when two friends kept calling and getting in the car when they pulled up next to me on the side of the road.

The word hope gets a bad rap. Maybe because it’s tied up with expectation. I used to write it on everything growing up — notebooks, tote bags, Converse, the crease of my hand. I don’t know why. Yesterday, I looked up the definition and saw an alternative meaning for hope is to trust. That makes more sense to me; the product of small acts collected over time. If I’m picking up the phone for help, I’m calling someone who answers, someone I’ve listened to before, someone who says, “I’m with you,” even if they’re miles away.

fin

ILLUSTRATIONS BY EDITH ZIMMERMAN