#011 - Voices of Despair
Apologies for the dramatic title, but I swear it makes sense.
See, I have become a volunteer for a suicide hotline in 2022. It wasn't something that I had planned or anything. A few of you might know, I'm a staff writer for a French Canadian media in my day job and I wanted to interview people who worked at a suicide hotline. I pitched the idea of listening to calls with them one evening and talk about what their life is like. Comms director said no, but pitched the idea that I’d follow the volunteer training classes and take calls myself for a while. These classes are 55h long.
Six months after, Comms director told me they made the offer to get rid of me and 100% expected that I would say no.
Apparently they didn't know me and I didn't really know the lengths I was willing to go for a good story, because I said yes. I won't go into the reasons that made me interested in suicide as a cause and I won't go into how training was, but I did the fifty-five hours and I've been taking calls from suicidal people four hours a week since November. Not going to lie, my life changed a lot over the last eight months or so. For the better. I never imagined that protecting suicidal people against themselves would feel this good.
I know what is going through your mind right now: Ben's fucking crazy. This is so stressful, I could never do that. I'm here to tell you this is nothing like it seems. You're not always dealing with people who have a knife against their wrist and threaten to cut their veins for your entire shift. It happens, but to give you an example: it happened to me once in four months. Most people are just feeling like absolute dogshit and don't have the necessary support or resources to stop feeling the way they do.
That's where we come in. See, despair is a nearsightedness of the soul. It's an inability to see past pain. Sometimes, someone can be extremely nearsighted. Almost blind. It's really difficult to find light in their growing darkness, but it is there. It’s our job to find it.
But most people just want to talk to someone and be helped. They're living through an ugly moment, but they don't want to live through it alone. This lead to some of the deepest, most beautiful conversation I ever had. Peaking into someone's soul and finding what's best about them when they can't even see it for themselves is a huge privilege. Of course it's also a huge responsibility and also, it doesn't always work. Some people who call have already given up. Others are simply not ready to go there.
But it feels great to help someone who is about to hurt themselves. I recommend it to anybody. It's great for the soul.
It's not a secret to anyone who knows me: I've been fascinated with extreme things for all my life. Violence, death, extreme forms of rebelliousness like Satanism. Fuck, I've reviewed a depressive suicidal black metal record this week. Many of my heroes have also taken their own lives for various, unconnected reasons. But guess what I found out working with people living with these extreme feelings? Near death, there is a lot of life. There are a lot of unspoken feelings and unlived moments that beg for the future to unfold.
I chose a Lifelover photo for the header of this article because they're a band who explored the very edges of this life and helped a lot of people navigate the edges of theirs. Visually, they're also a good representation of how it feels like to be in the headspace of suicidal person. That overbearing feeling that you lost control of everything and that the world is going to shit all around you. The guys also looked rad as fuck, you gotta admit it.
That's it. That's what I had to say. I help people now and it feels fucking awesome to do so. I didn't know it could feel this awesome. I hope you can find something that makes you feel the same.
