I was young and what I lacked in experience I made up for in totally unearned confidence. I knew I wanted to help people for a living and I was sure I was going to be great at it. In order to grace the world with my innate mystical ability to heal, I decided to volunteer on the Distress Line in Edmonton.
I went through their intense training program. It was 54 hours of role plays and instruction on how to be a crisis volunteer. To this day it still forms the foundation of my practice with people, more so than any of the courses and degrees I have gotten since.
After all the instruction I was ready to take my first call. I was surprisingly nervous. You never know what is going to be happening or who you will be talking to when you pick up the phone. My trainers said I was ready but in those moments before the phone rang for the first time, my inflated confidence deflated. I had no idea what I was doing.
When the phone finally rang, I was ready to make a run for it.
Ring-ring!
Someone else that knew what they were doing could take this one.
Ring-ring!
But all the other volunteers were busy. It dawned on me that the person calling the crisis line might really need to talk to someone and I was the only one here.
Ring-ring!
Well crap! I took a deep breath and decided to fake courage. I picked up the phone.
“Hello, is this Crosstown motors?” Wrong number. I can’t even begin to tell you how relieved I was until the phone rang again.
I picked it up this time immediately. What I heard on the other end was a gentle sob. My fears, and my anxiety didn’t matter anymore. What mattered was this woman that was so sad that she was without words. The advice of my trainers started coming back to me.
“Take your time,” I said and I just sat there. When she finally found her voice she told me a story about how her husband died. She told me of their fight and her relief when he finally left. She told me of how she was boiling a pot of water for a cup of tea when she heard the gunshot. She told me of what it was like standing at the front door of her house knowing in her heart that when she opened the door her life would change. Then she told me about the flashes of people that paraded in and out of her house for the following weeks two weeks. Police, family, funeral directors, neighbors.
I listened to her. What the hell could I say to this woman? I was in my idyllic twenties with virtually no real life experience with this stuff. The only thing I could think to do was to listen.
At the end of the call she thanked me. She thanked me. I couldn’t believe my ears. She showed such courage, vulnerability, and trust. In that one phone call she showed me that I could do this, that I could listen and learn from the people that privileged me with their stories.
She did this by showing me that it wasn’t about me, about my skills, or about my inflated ego. It was about her.
At the end of the phone call she taught me about hope. Her gratefulness over the fact that I was willing to listen was inspiring. She spoke of the faith she had that somehow would get through this. It showed me that hope is infallible. It hides in the darkest corners.
I wish I could thank her for the gift that she gave me.
**Please keep in mind that the spirit of the story is true but the details are not. **