“You Don’t Matter”
TW: Suicidal thoughts
It’s not a phrase I say to myself or anyone else often. But earlier this week, I told it to myself over and over as I did the best I could to help save a friend’s life.
It started after my first Zoom call of the workday, when I checked in on a friend who told me the night before that she was going through an extremely hard time. When I read Sami’s (name changed for privacy) message, my heart began to pound.
She described a sleepless night filled with horrific nightmares that she’d tried to chase away with Xanax, painkillers, and muscle relaxers all at the same time. She didn’t sound like herself at all, and at the end of the message, she wrote that she didn’t know how to go on, or if she could go on.
I instantly felt myself thrown back years, to the point when I locked myself in the chapel bathroom of my college because there was nothing in there that I could use to hurt myself. I was terrified, thinking there was no way out for me either - and then I reached out to my mom, who called my psychiatrist in a three-way call and got me on the fastest path to treatment.
It’s a time in my life that I hate to think about, but it was my only reference for the situation going forward. It didn’t matter that I have spent so much time trying to forget - it mattered that I remember the suicide hotline, the way I felt, the things I needed from those around me.
Our experiences seemed similar the more she told me, even though they had completely different catalysts. I was even taking Xanax at the time, thankfully stopping after experiencing reactive anxiety. As I talked to her, I remembered waking up early after fighting so hard to go to sleep, running over to the gym even though I’ve never been a fan of working out, just to try to get some of the nervous energy out of my system. I remembered how disgusting food seemed to me, how my best friend sat on the floor with me and coaxed me into eating a bowl of Rice Krispies with no milk. I wished to be sitting on the floor with Sami, helping her in any way I possibly could instead of being hundreds of miles away, behind a computer screen.
The only thing I could think of was to reach out to the chat line of the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline (https://suicidepreventionlifeline.org/), which I could do while being on my next Zoom call. I paid just enough attention to not call attention to myself at work while I typed everything that was going on to a counselor.
In that moment, Sami didn’t need my platitudes or what had - or hadn’t - worked for me. She didn’t need to know my sordid history with Xanax or the fact that I was so terribly scared. Instead, she needed to hear the suicide prevention counselor’s words coming from my mouth, and in turn, that would help those of us not in her situation figure out what to do next.
One of the first things the counselor asked me to write to her was to ask, point blank, if Sami was considering hurting herself. No euphemisms, he said - that way, there’s no room for confusion. It had been a long time since I’d written something like that, instead preferring to use euphemisms and hide from what I’m afraid of.
But that day, it didn’t matter that I categorically refuse to watch TV shows or movies with suicide scenes and often choose to skip ones that even mention it at all. It didn’t matter that even just typing the word “suicide” scares me. What mattered was that she needed someone to ask her if she was thinking of hurting herself, no matter what that might look like.
Any answer that isn’t a “no,” to me, is an unequivocal sign of danger. She said “kinda,” and that she was feeling weak and worthless, too much to carry on. She said how easy it would be to just take some more Xanax and slip away into sleep, never to feel the pain again.
At that point, I typed frantically in the chat, conveying her responses to the counselor. He helped me figure out some followup questions - how much medicine she’d taken, how she was feeling physically, and after the questions, to just let her talk and show that I’m listening.
She told me more about what had been happening, and eventually told me she wanted to try to sleep again. I was worried, especially since she’d taken another Xanax while we were talking, but at that point there wasn’t much else the counselor could do. He told me to dial the hotline and get some local help over to her just in case, someone to talk with in person even during the pandemic. Someone with more training than me, even though I wanted to swoop in and fix everything myself.
Back when I was experiencing suicidal thoughts, I remember who came to help me: two police officers, kind but seeming a little out of their depths as they didn’t really know what to say. They gave me a survey that asked a bunch of questions about my mental state as they drove me to the hospital, and the only one I remember is whether I was feeling hopeless. It was a straight-up “yes” from me, but I realized I couldn’t picture Sami trusting a quiz from police officers or wanting to be taken to a hospital. She wasn’t quite in the worst danger possible, and I couldn’t just impose what worked for me.
As I picked up my cell phone to call the hotline, I could almost see my reflection in the chapel basement mirror on the blank screen - but that didn’t matter at all. I dialed the hotline, then contacted a local organization on their recommendation.
Someone from the local organization called Sami, presumably told her that I’d given them her number and some basic information, and the counselor agreed with me that she seemed like she needed in-person help. Even though I wanted to stay texting with her for as long as I could, even if just to feed my insatiable desire to control the uncontrollable situations in life, my needs didn’t matter. She needed someone who could be in her house and help her, and the counselor sent over a crisis response team to help.
It fell to me to get them there - I had two different records of her address, one of which came from a mutual friend who’d been to her apartment before. I never had, so I ended up asking him the things the crisis team asked me when they couldn’t find her apartment. It didn’t matter that I was getting increasingly frazzled and had yet another call in a few minutes, and this one, I was supposed to be leading. It mattered that I tell everything our mutual friend said to the crisis team, even though I got off the phone only moments before my call was scheduled to begin.
All that mattered, in the end, was that the crisis team found Sami - crying, panicked, but alive - and they were in her apartment with her.
Only at that point, once I knew Sami was safe, did I allow my own feelings to matter. After my last work call of the day, I took a long walk with my mom, played video games with my dad, and hugged my dog. I ate ice cream, made plans to see my Nana (socially distantly and masked), and let myself feel overwhelmed and panicked and everything that I thought needed to come out earlier. I even started to grieve for a torn-apart friend group that might be too far gone for me to fix, that will hurt my own life but thankfully not nearly as much as Sami is hurt.
As someone who’s been sharing my mental health story for over two years on No Shame On U’s blog, I have a lot of experience with making my history matter. But this experience has showed me that listening to what is needed by the most vulnerable person in a conversation can be exactly the right thing to do. What matters most is finding out what really matters - and what can help someone in need find the way forward.
Ellie, a writer new to the Chicago area, was diagnosed with OCD at age 3. She hopes to educate others about her condition and end the stigma against mental illness.