“I feel guilty for having called you,” I confess to the stranger
at the other end of the line.
“Why is that?” Hotline asks in reply.
“We both know at this point, an hour into this call, that I was
never going to kill myself.”
“And that makes you feel guilty?”
“I’ve wasted your time and stolen it from someone who probably
needed it much more than I did.”
“You called, so you must have been feeling something fairly strong
that made you think you were going to harm yourself.”
“Yeah, but it wasn’t like I was actually going to do it.”
“You don’t know how far those feelings may have pushed you; you
did the right thing by calling.”
“You say that, but I’m sure you talk every day to people far more
desperate than I am to leave this world. I feel like I’m taking up time you
could better spend by helping someone that really needs it.”
“I don’t think desperation works that way; you can’t pull out a
measuring tape and compare one person’s desperation to another’s.”
“Maybe so, but I still feel selfish.”
“Feel selfish if you need to, but you’re alive, and you seem to
want to stay that way. I’ll call that a win.”
“Tonight was the closest I have ever come to ending who I am, but
as bad as it was, as desperate and lonely and terrible as I felt, it was nothing
compared to what my brother went through, or how hopeless he must have felt at
the end.”
“Is that what you want? To know what he went through? To feel how
he felt?”
A heavy silence fills my ends of the line.
“To what end? I never knew your brother, but I can’t believe he
would want you to go through everything he did.”
“No, he wouldn’t, in spite of the fact that I treated him like
shit for years.” My voice is wet with tears, and I hate the sound of it.
“Sounds like he was a pretty loving guy, your brother.”
“He was.”
“Sounds like he’d forgive you if he were here.”
“Oh, he already has, I know he has.”
“Sounds like he isn’t the one who needs to forgive you.”
I stand in the empty high school parking lot, watching my breath
appear and fade into the cold dark night. I have heard Hotline’s heavy
implication many times before, from people that love me, in language much less
subtle.
“This goes against protocol, but what’s your brother’s name?”
Hotline asks.
I close my eyes and remember my brother’s face, bright and smiling
while my kids jump and bounce around him, wild-eyed, happy, and vying for their
precious uncle’s attention as they gleefully shout his name.
“Jared.”
It has been almost ten years since Jared died. I’ve tried to move
forward with my life, blessed with a wife and kids and friends that love and
support me, and I have experienced moments of great change, joy, and success. But
the harsh memories of how I mis-treated my brother have remained tethered to me
like a black balloon, watching over my happiest moments with sadness, guilt,
and regret.
It is a hard thing, to forgive yourself.
I have sometimes jerked down on the black balloon’s tether, inviting
its shadow to descend just a bit, for just a while, so that it may more fully
cover me in darkness. It is inside the resulting shadow of these descensions
that I have found myself in our bedroom closet biting the back of my wrist
until it bruises, out walking the streets of the city in the dark of night, or numbing
away the hours in the scalding waters of a tub, accompanied by long poured
glasses of rum and dark, murderous, subtitled television.
It is a hard thing, to live your life as a cliché.
There have also been times that I have pulled the black balloon much
too close. Pressing it against my chest, I can feel the static crackle of its
dark energy, and I welcome the emotional rush as the warm, familiar companionship
of Grief embraces me. In moments when no one else can or will, Grief dotes on me,
holding my hand and keeping me company as I tremble and cry and wish for the
impossible. But eventually Grief tires of my company. It is then that she turns
on me, reminding me again and again of the terrible things I said, the terrible
things I did, the terrible person I was. Satisfied that I am at my lowest,
Grief quietly slips away, leaving me in the capable hands of Guilt, her formidable
protege. Guilt is a real sonofabitch; he pours it on thick, coating me in a dark,
viscous shell of self-loathing until I am unable to stomach my own existence as
a selfish, unlovable, unforgiveable wretch. It is within the constricting cocoon
of Guilt’s fellowship that I begin to believe that my life would be better
without me in it.
It is a hard thing, to go on living in spite of hating yourself.
“How would you feel about being loving like Jared, and forgiving
yourself?” Hotline suggests, his gentle tone interrupting my harmful reverie.
“It’s definitely what he would want,” I admit.
“Of course it is, but is it what you want?”
My mind trods back through all the time I’ve lost in the company
of Guilt.
“Yes, I want to forgive myself,” I finally declare, after a long and
thoughtful come-to-Jesus silence.
“Okay, good. Now do it.”
“What, like, right now?”
“No time like the present!”
“I’ve spent years building this guilt, I can’t just forgive myself
in an instant and be happy to go on living!”
“It’s true that most people can’t.”
“Well then what the hell am I going to do, call you every night?”
“No, you’re going to wake up and actively forgive yourself every
day,” Hotline answers, a gentle “duh” in his tone.
“Every day for the rest of my life?”
“Every day for weeks, months, years, for however long it takes it to
stick…“
“It took a while to build it, it’s going to take a while to tear
it down.”
“Oh, that’s good, do yourself a favor and remember that whenever
you don’t feel like forgiving yourself.”
“I should probably write it on my bathroom mirror.”
“Whatever it takes,” Hotline says.
“Paint it on the ceiling above my bed…”
“You could set it as the wallpaper on your phone…” Hotline
suggests.
“On every wall in my house…”
“Don’t forget the front of the fridge…” Hotline adds.
“And every other surface that I look at several times a day,” I conclude.
“Whatever it takes,” Hotline says.
A few moments later, after expressing my sincere gratitude to a total
stranger whose name I will never know but whose words I will never forget, I
end the call. As I walk across the empty parking lot, back to my home and my
family sleeping within its walls, I imagine Guilt, alone and defeated, sulking off into the night.
The black balloon’s tether slips just a bit.
For anyone reading this that may now or ever find themselves feeling
things that leave them doubting their worth in the slightest, Hotline’s direct number
is free to anyone who needs it, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year: 1-800-273-8255
