But there's wolves!
Thoughts on struggle from a calloused crisis phone worker.
Sometimes, I imagine the callers1 as anonymous beggars surrounding the last American helicopter leaving Saigon. They hold their children over their heads and yell for salvation, their neck muscles vibrating tight against their skin as they jostle for attention.
From the chopper's cabin, it's an odd sight. The rotor blade drowns out all other sounds. I look upon their mute faces, their mouths stretched inhumanly wide, bugs greedily picking food from their teeth, tears streaming down their faces. Their children extended as far as possible above their heads, their skinny frames leaning forward and seeming to sway from side to side as the crowd roils around them and they lose their footing.
Without sound, they look like cathartic concertgoers rocking their children in time to a classic tune, as they would Zippos or cellphones or homemade posters. Basking in the glow of divine celebrity.
Mid-conversation, they're prone to blurting out random non-sequiturs, simultaneously appealing to pity and clamoring for a non-existent password:
"My father is a disabled veteran!"
"I'm a victim of human trafficking!"
"My children hate me!"
"I have a large tumor in my stomach!"
"My child has leukemia!"
Maybe they aren't beggars in Saigon; perhaps they're bidders duking it out in a raucous auction hall:
"Next up, lot #10378: Salvation. And we're off—go, go!—whad'ya say, sir?—yes!—outta the gate with a disabled vet pops—now we're cookin', go!—one at a time!—say, bid 'em high—water's warm, folks!—c’mon, go!—that’s the spirit, ma’am!—got a human trafficking vic, back row!—keep it goin', folks!—takes two to tango!—go! go! yes’em!—that's the sizzle on the steak, go!—bid 'em high—higher!—woowee!—whoa now!—yessir!—got a child with leukemia, front row!—yes!—go! get it!—c'mon now, raise those paddles high!—going once—c'mon now!—pride will you do you no good where your going folks, best to spend it all here!—go! yes! c’mon!—going twice!—last chance!—c’mon!—going once, twice—sooooooooold to the folks with the leukemia child!"
Or—yes, this is more apt—maybe they're folks walking into a pawn shop, plopping their starving infant daughter on the counter, her wet diaper squishing against the dirty glass— "What can I get for this?" they ask, "She has to be worth something, right?"
"Hmmm, I can do ten bucks for it."
"Ten bucks? Are you crazy?! C'mon, man, stop dicking me around! This is a starving kid—a starving American kid; she has to be worth something!"
They're right. No child should starve. Period. Unfortunately, despite their best attempts to bedazzle their woes with sick children or tales of tummy tumors—in the eyes of the world and the calloused heart (that is to say, professional heart) of a social worker, their struggles remain ordinary.
Because they are ordinary, solutions are in high demand, a demand exponentially dwarfing the supply.
It appears that the Personal Fable of Adolescence never fully retires. Every caller takes their struggle to be a hopelessly unique and unfathomably gruesome set of circumstances, a once-in-a-generation confluence God has seen fit to bestow upon them. Therefore, the typical treatment and resources won't cut it. The system must grind to a halt and witness them; I must spring forth and smash every break-glass-in-case-of-emergency because, indeed if this isn't an emergency—what is?
The struggle is new to them; it is an agonizing crossroads in the context of their lives. In the end, more often than not, they're just getting evicted, their food stamps were reduced, or their brother shot himself—some type of mundane catastrophe thousands of others are afflicted with daily.
On their side of the phone, their world is ending. And maybe it is, but then again, so is everyone else's.
I remember when I first started. I'd get swept up in the urgency of the callers' crises. I'd sit up stock straight in my chair, feeling my heart beat double and the fuzziness of adrenaline shoot through my legs. But, after thousands of calls, these ordinary crises have lost their oompf. I do my best to help these folks, but I do so on autopilot, going through ritualized motions. A necessary callousness has taken hold. The type of callous that grows on the budding guitarist's fingers, protecting their little mitts from the savageness of the strings.
I'm the villager fed up with the boy crying wolf. Despite the local boy's peculiar aptitude for precise prediction—indeed, the wolves always come on his say so—I grow tired of him. I grow weary of the wolves. The fear they once instilled in me has dissipated. I no longer scream, rushing around in panic, gathering my flock. I've adapted. I've invested in a stronger, taller fence. In fact, I've befriended some of the wolves—the particularly amenable ones make great pets.
I've become numb to particular strains of struggle. And I haven't yet worked out if this is a good or bad thing, or if it transcends this simple binary.
Perhaps it makes me good at my job. Experience and repetition breed callouses. Callouses allow me to keep an even keel, focus, and listen—to remain calm in the callers' moments of distress. From my even keel, I can build rapport and show them that the wolves, while scary, are an invasive predator that can be tamed.
"But there's wolves out there! They're coming for me!"
"Let me help you gather your flock. You can keep them behind my walls. They came for me once; we can get through this. Stay calm."
I can't help if I'm running alongside them.
On the other hand, it may make me horrible at my job. Maybe the distance callousness creates isn't productive. It could make me seem jaded, complacent, and irreverent. It could be that the truth is that I am jaded, complacent, and irreverent, that the idea of "callousness" is, at best, a self-constructed ruse to ignore this truth. Simply a way for me to spin a concerning trend into an asset.
"But there's wolves out there! They're coming for me!"
"So? They're coming for us all."
What I do know is that it takes something extraordinary to pierce through the callouses (for lack of a better term). In these moments, I get excited. I feel that rush again.
"Hello, my name is Patrick; how can I help you today?"
"My schizophrenic daughter is terrified of the bathroom and has been shitting in McDonald's bags and hiding them around the house."
Ah! Yes! FINALLY! Something new! I feel like a disinterested movie director observing his talent stumble ass-backward into something magical: "YES! YES! Stay with it! Keep rolling!"
"—she can't hold a job because she is afraid to shower."
"OF COURSE! YES! YES! Ohhhhhhh!"
"I was brutally murdered at the Taylor Swift concert by the convicted sex murderer Donald Trump. He ordered his goons to repeatedly rape me with AK-47s until I bled out. They know I was reincarnated, and they're hunting me."
"YES! YES! BRILLANT!"
After years of re-runs, a new episode.
"INSPIRED! DELICIOUS! MAGICAL!"
Something to sink my teeth into!
Something to make the gears turn!
Something to entertain me!
Someone I can actually help.
As J Peterman says, “This is interesting writing!” For real though, everything you’ve written so far here is stellar so I hope you keep going. I considered volunteering for something like this awhile back. To be honest, you perfectly capture my assumptions of what it’d be like for someone with my specific variety of emotional intelligence. This is going to be a wild ride!