The 54th Deadline: A 911 Wake-up Call
My story is going to be told in an erratic fashion, whenever the thoughts come to mind. I could just make everything chronological, but I just think getting certain things off of my chest as I get around to it will be better for me in terms of self-therapy.
So today at work, I felt inclined to write about something very personal that happened to me. I thought about this incident all day, and I just felt the urge to write about it when I got home. It is easily one of my most embarrassing moments for me to go through, but it was a necessary wake-up call to snap me out of a depressing situation.
Anyway, the short version of the story was I had just moved to another city a year prior, but I was going through another case of long-term unemployment. It was more than a year of being jobless again. Same crap - different city. I was hoping to transition toward bigger and better things in a new place, on the other side of the state no less.
The plan was straightforward: get a “good” job and move out of the very welcoming and generous family’s house I was staying with as I was trying to get on my feet. Of course, nothing panned out the way I wanted. Not even close.
It just felt like a case of sending out resumes and job applications hopelessly. I just felt so defeated after a while. Why bother, or so I thought… This was the wrong attitude to have. It was the loser’s way of thinking.
I was falling apart again, history was repeating itself and I was near a breaking point. I was fortunate enough to live at this family’s house rent-free, but I felt like such a sponge. The guilt was getting to me. I was feeling so disgusted with myself as a person. I was a college grad who had to leech to survive. I would be homeless, otherwise.
What could I do? Or so I thought. In reality, there were plenty of logical moves to make, but I was not executing them. I was too caught up in my own unemployment like a whining, entitled brat.
The only real solace I had left at this stage in the game was my relationships with “online friends.” Yes, it is as lonely as it sounds, but hey. I was going through some rough months. Being able to chat with my online friends on Skype every day kept my willpower afloat, no matter how artificial the friendships were on a technical level.
I talked about my hopes and dreams, YouTube videos, anime, games or whatever. It was fun. It was legitimately fun… It took my mind off things. I could pretend my real-life problems did not exist for a few hours each day. I was definitely just escaping from my issues instead of confronting them like an adult.
But there came a point where my problems in real life started to seep into my online world. I started getting really “sick” in the head, or at least in how I perceived things. It got so bad that some online friends stopped interacting with me altogether. They started saying lies like, “Oh, my Skype is bugged. I never see your messages.”
And we all know that isn’t true. No such bug exists, at least on that extreme of a level where apparently a bunch of my online friends were not getting my attempts at conversation for at least a week or so.
They were avoiding me.
They went as far as to hide from and switch their status displays to “Offline.”
That was the gist of it, without overcomplicating it. They were avoiding me because I was becoming, what a surprise, a nuisance. I kept badgering my friends for more and more conversations.
Less about the fun stuff. I was getting too personal. I was treating them like my personal therapists. My multiple therapists who happened to be all on Skype, no less… I just ended up vomiting my personal problems onto them in large volumes. No sane person could handle it. It was wrong of me to do so, and I hate myself to this day for doing it. But I was weak. I was needy.
I was being a bad online friend. Heck, I was being a bad person in general.
There are trained professionals out there who would have probably deemed me as really pathetic. I didn’t need to pay hundreds of dollars on official appointments to tell me that.
Anyway, without going too in-depth about what really started to unfold, I had one particular online friend who would end up doing something really important…
She, who I will call her “IC” to protect her identity, saved my life.
“IC” saved my life because she clearly cared enough about me as a person, online or otherwise, to call the police on me. Yes, the actual police.
Despite the fact that she lived in a different state, despite the fact we had never actually had a conversation face-to-face or anything like that, we weren’t dating online or whatever… She called the cops on me.
She had to. I was starting to scare people. She got frightened enough to worry about my own safety.
Basically, I got really melodramatic one day. I was really getting ahead of myself, and it just felt like everything in my mind was imploding. I wanted attention, so I sent IC a disturbing message.
She thought I was going to kill myself. Yup, IC had thought I had written a suicide note.
Now, for the record, I will throw out there I was not suicidal at this point, nor have I ever had the complete urge to carry out the worst sin in existence. I have been down in the depths of my own despair, drowning in a sea filled with my own misery and broken dreams. But I have never been suicidal, and I never intend to be…
Regardless, that is besides the point. IC truly believed I was going to do something stupid that would have ended my life.
When she texted me that night and said she was calling the cops, I panicked. I tried to call her and beg about taking back what she had alerted the authorities about, but I was too late. It was not a joke or anything, but I was just beginning to settle down that day.
When I arrived home, a little more than 30 minutes later the cops arrived. Two of them. A lady and a guy cop.
I happened to be outside taking some cardboard out.
They told me to drop what I had in my hand. They came up and did the questioning spiel. Asked me if I had weapons or anything like that.
The family I was staying with stood at the door and watched from afar, totally unsure of what had happened. Did I commit a crime? Was there a misunderstanding?
And during this whole time, I was just completely embarrassed beyond belief. I just felt goosebumps all over, trying not to sound scared in front of the cops. I am really intimidated by cops in general, so that did not help.
As soon as I told the cops that I had just messaged my friend something stupid, and then they asked me why I would do such a thing…
At this point, I accepted that I was an idiot. I was being a big, totally stupid idiot about it all.
When the cops concluded that I was in fact fine, for the time being anyway, they left. No followup the next day. I had a long talk with the family I stayed with later that night. I had to tell them that I was not suicidal and whatnot…
A very uncomfortable conversation.
When everything was said and done, I hopped onto my computer that night. I wrote up a new resume and applied to a new restaurant opening up in town. Within a few days, I had a job again.
It was that “easy,” or so I thought. Why did this all take so long?
Actually, this goes deeper than that.
I felt way too ashamed of myself to contact IC properly to thank her immediately for caring so much about my well-being. The fact is, if I were really suicidal, I would have been dead by now.
Any other online friend would have been like.
“OK, cool.” And then they would have proceeded on with their lives.
After all, online friends are only friends for as long as both people remain interested in each other. For gaming, conversation or whatever.
But IC… She was different.
I felt like such a jerk, such a messed-up individual that I just blocked IC on everything we were connected on: Facebook, Twitter… Everything…
In a cowardly yet logical way, I was protecting IC from myself. My own foolishness.
It would take at least a year before I would actually call her on a physical phone to thank her for what she did. But the thing is, after that, I might as well just delete her number on my phone. It still exists in my contacts. I have not tried to call her since. I do not plan to, but not for the reasons you may think.
Perhaps part of me is optimistic we can be friends again someday. Perhaps part of me just wants to keep that contact there as a reminder, as a cruel self-punishment to refresh my memory for whenever I start to lose my marbles again.
If IC ever reads this, if she somehow stumbles on this thing tomorrow or whatever, I just want her to realize that she will always be an important person in my life.
She truly saved my life that day by dialing 911. It was more than just getting a wake-up call to find a job to snap me out of my unemployment funk. It was more than just showing that she cared about another human being…
To IC, I have this to say with complete sincerity:
IC, thank you for doing what you did that day for me. You may have wondered up to this point as to why I have not tried to reforge our friendship after all of this time. The answer is simple. I don’t deserve to be your friend. I don’t deserve someone like you in my life.
It is not you who is the problem. It is me. And it is me alone who has to spend the rest of his life to repent for putting you through such an emotional ordeal. Before all of the bad stuff, I genuinely respected you on so many levels. We had a lot of happy and fun moments as online friends. It is a shame I threw it all away because I was just so insecure about my personal problems.
I truly believe you were an essential catalyst in regards to helping me get back on track and one step closer toward figuring it all out on this personal journey of mine. Someday, I hope to look back and recall how one important phone call kept me from losing it all.
This burned bridge before us, that I set fire to myself, is a symbol for both of us to move on from each other.
Remember… This burned bridge before us, that I set fire to myself, is a symbol for both of us to move on from each other. I wish you nothing but the best if you ever happen to read this story.
Regards,
Nhan
