988.

Three numbers that saved me from joining the 27 club.

Photo by Gilles Lambert on Unsplash

This post was incredibly difficult for me to write. However, I felt it necessary because I firmly believe that I am not alone. If you or someone you know is struggling with depression or suicidal thoughts, get help immediately. Life is better with you here. I promise.

The number was 988.

My thumb trembled over the call button

As I pondered what on earth I was even doing.

I held my breath and pushed call.

A kind gentleman answered on the other line.

“Suicide hotline, this is Dan. Are you safe?”

A knot in my throat caused me to squeak instead of respond before the tears came flowing out of me like torrential rain.

And the truth was, I was safe… on the outside.

I had pulled my car over to the grassy edge of the two-lane highway and flipped on my hazard lights to notify any passersby.

I was safe.

But I didn’t trust that I’d continue to be.

•

It’s a weird thing not being able to trust yourself

Feeling as though you are being controlled from the inside

One moment blissfully listening to a favorite song

And the next contemplating what it might feel like to turn the steering wheel towards the concrete retaining wall.

•

I had sought professional help only a month prior and ended up admitting for a couple of nights. The sterile walls and floors of the small space called my room at this unknown facility were bone-chilling. All I thought about was my wife and two kids as sleep taunted me far in the distance.

Because I self-admitted with depression and anxiety, I was put on suicide watch where the staff removed any potential hazards from my room and had mandatory checks every 15 minutes to make sure I was okay.

I met other people who were going through similar life conundrums, each with a unique set of circumstances but strikingly similar mental battles. Some had self-admitted like me. Others were checked in by their families, jobs, or the police.

I was able to utilize a phone card that allowed me to call my wife. She immediately answered and upon hearing my voice was overwhelmed with emotion. I could hear my sweet baby boy cooing in the background while my daughter kept asking, “Daddy? Where’s daddy?”

I promised her I’d be home soon. Hearing their voices made my healing mandatory. I had to get better for them.

•

Dan and I spoke for about 30 minutes as I sat parked in my running car on a balmy Spring day. I rolled down my windows and let the fresh air kiss my face and fill my lungs as salty tears traced my cheeks.

I told him everything and entrusted him with the pieces of my story that had built their home in the shadows for the last 27 years. I figured that if he was there to persuade me to stick around, he had to know the truth. I at least owed him that.

He held space for my pain and validated my suffering as I regurgitated the steady decline of my emotional turmoil and my methodical plan to remove the problem from the world, that problem being me. I told him about my children and wife who deserved a better husband and father who would be steadfast and strong. About years and years of feeling insecure and insignificant.

I didn’t believe that the cancer was growing within me, I believed that I was the cancer. But not to myself, to the world around me. Thus, I wasn’t searching for freedom from my suffering, I was offering others freedom from dealing with me in my suffering.

I didn’t consider the ramifications of my children not knowing their father, or my wife having to deal with losing her husband.

The silence that followed my words was deafening. The weight of pain palpable. After a few seconds that felt like hours, Dan replied, “I want you to do me a favor. I want you to make me a promise that when I call you again tomorrow, you’ll pick up the phone. I’m not asking for you to survive the entire week right now, I’m just begging you to live through the rest of today. Tomorrow, I’m going to call you at 9:00 am and I need you to be there. Can you do that?”

Hesitantly I agreed.

Dan asked the same favor each day for 72 days straight. Each morning calling me promptly at 9:00 am. Each morning I’d respond, “I’m still here.” Dan saved my life. And through the months of visiting together on the phone, he helped orient me to the miracle of each new day. Of each moment. He’d still be calling me now had I not developed my own desire to live and updated him that I was feeling much more optimistic. But even now, though a volunteer, I know he is only a simple phone call away.

•

It all goes so fast

All it takes is a moment

Of pain

Of desperation

Of hopelessness

To radically and permanently change the trajectory of life forever.

I think that’s the scariest part of it all;

That it is so automatic

So unbidden

Inadvertently spontaneous

One more pill

One trigger pull

One jump

One knee-jerk response

One second of cognitive consent

To derail the train of existence that had been chugging along for years.

•

But if I’ve learned one thing

It is that life still is worth living

Hope isn’t all that far away

Love is what is following you

And light will guide the way

Please don’t fight battles alone

Talk to someone

Talk to a loved one

Talk to me.

The suicide prevention hotline is 988.

Please get help.

To everyone else, check in on your friends.

Check in on your family.

Say hi to the people in your community.

Extend kindness.

Love.

Compassion.

You never know what someone else might be going through.