It's not about “RU OK?” That
happens once a year.
My not-quite-random call to one of my
oldest friends – someone I've known since about 1975 or 1976 –
was just a “hi, how's it going?”
She was quiet and monosyllabic, which
if I wasn't as thick as a plank might have given me a hint. I really
am thick, though. I don't get the interpersonal signals very well,
and I talk too much anyhow, and when I eventually noticed that I was
doing all the talking, except for single words from the other end of
the line, I started trying to ask “are you okay?”-type questions.
For which I am as well fitted as a
square peg confronted with a round hole, and a small boy with a
hammer.
Thank heavens, the friend has by now
known me for close to 40 years. And, perhaps, she's as familiar with
awkwardness as I am. So somehow we got through the initial
miscommunications to a discussion of her children, someone she likes
as a friend but doesn't want to sleep with, Ms T's health, and
various other things.
Just one of those calls that people
make, really: the slightly awkward conversations that old friends
might have, when there's no actual news, tailing off to a slightly
awkward goodbye-for-now.
And a week later a text arrived that
called me “warm and fluffy”, which is a bit of a stretch, so I
called again instead of waiting our usual interval, about a month and
sometimes as long as a year.
I won't pretend I can reconstruct the
conversation, because I got a jolt and don't remember the details.
But somewhere in there, she told me I
called when she was working through a suicide-pile of pills.
I have no special, secret magic
about suicide prevention. I have a good, healthy, iceberg-sized ego,
but really there have to be limits. "You're good, but not that good".
It's about people talking to people.
Communication – making sure that
people who might be isolated don't get that way – is a big hunk of
making us all feel worthwhile. Wanted, if for nothing more than a
“hello”.
The idea that someone might call just
because they want to talk to you
is something that matters.
There's no business-case for the call, no discernible benefit to be
had, no plan in the conversation beyond “hello”.
Because
– you're worth talking to simply for the conversation. Simply for
“the sound I have heard in your hello”. Simply because you're a
human with at least one friend left in the world.
That's
more than a (my opinion) contrived “RUOK” campaign, and it seems
to matter. It mattered to my old school friend, and it matters to me
as well. I know who to call if 4am is too dark to see the dawn, because I have someone who gives me (thank you, you know who you are) infinite license.
People
with depression are told to “make the call” – send out a shout
if they're feeling bad – and I wonder if that doesn't create a
problem for them: “But I don't want to be a burden” becomes
another reason to be depressed, if you doubt yourself.
But
confining communications in the other direction to “RU OK Day”
leaves out the rest of the year, when a single incoming call makes the
difference.
Which,
I guess, explains the point of this ill-directed, probably
self-indulgent and certainly not definitive collection of thoughts.
You
can't know when or if your call to a friend will make a difference to
someone.
You
certainly don't have any special expertise in suicide prevention.
What
you do have is a bunch of friends who might be happy to hear from
you.
So:
make the effort. Get yourself off the impersonal feeds from time to
time to simply let someone hear your voice. “The sound I have heard
in your hello” might be someone's call back from the abyss.
