threeplusfire | LJ Idol, Week 1: Saying Goodbye

At the hotline, saying goodbye was a fraught and perilous moment. So often I wouldn't even get the chance. The caller would hang up in a rage, in a panic, in fear or grief. Sometimes just as I started to say the words, some new secret would burst forth from the phone in a rush. Sometimes it was nothing and sometimes it was everything. Sometimes it was not enough. It was the only certain thing.

For nearly three years, I worked with the Texas Department of Family & Protective Services at the Abuse Hotline. It is a centralized hotline that serves the entire state, a free call where a person can report abuse to children, the elderly or the disabled. It is an enormous operation, running 24 hours a day, every single day of the year. The majority of my time was spent directly on the phone. (The Hotline also takes reports by fax, mail and an online reporting site. All reporters can choose to remain anonymous. Our model has been so successful at assessing and routing information that other states and even other countries have come to see how it works so that they might implement similar programs at home.)

My degree is in Czech & Russian Studies, not social work. I never formally trained for this. But things are what they are: the state pays too little, there aren't enough people and there is so much need. A college degree and a couple writing & analysis tests later I was in a training program. I needed health insurance, and I needed to be doing something more than just bringing home a paycheck from a job I hated. So I chose to work with the Hotline. My work gave me a fierce and terrible satisfaction. I worked hard and I was good at what I was doing. I took anywhere from ten to eighteen calls a day, forty hours a week. Leaving out the reports that came on paper and the time I spent on work away from the phones, a conservative estimate puts me at more than 50,000 calls. Thousands of voices, thousands of goodbyes to say even after the calls that were hangups, wrong numbers or innocuous stories that relieved the grinding pressure of the others. The work is literally life and death, something we could never afford to forget.

I learned quickly how to assess the cadence and tone of a caller's speech, listening for the clues that could tell me when to press and when to just let them talk themselves into the story. Some were calm, some were out of their minds, angry, sad, scared, stunned and deadpan. I spoke to all kinds of people, from police officers to parents, strangers in dollar stores, pastors, family members, friends, employers, bank clerks and drug dealers. I heard voices who reminded me of myself, of my family, of my friends. When the call was hard, I tried to end it with as much kindness as I could summon. I would thank them, I would tell them they were brave, that they made the right choice. I said goodbye and hoped my voice conveyed all the compassion and empathy I could give them. Sometimes I needed to lay my head down on my desk, pressing the cool laminate into my forehead for a long moment before I started writing my report. With each goodbye, the voice disappeared and I wrote a narrative and anlaysis in the clinical, legal language of the department.

Each one was unique. Goodbyes could drag themselves out for long minutes. It was hard to leave some of them alone on the other end of the phone. Sometimes I could not get away from the need in their voices. Goodbye seemed so useless a thing to say. What could you say to make it any better? Good luck, take care, have a nice day, talk to you later? None of those seemed appropriate. I heard things on a daily basis that broke my heart, things that gave me nightmares and things that will never leave me. Every goodbye was made of relief and despair.

The hardest goodbyes were the suicides. Sometimes our callers were suicidal and ended up on the other end of the line through chance or choice. When they announced their intention, my hands would tremble just above the keys and my heart fluttered over a couple beats in an adrenaline surge. I had to keep the panic out of my voice and keep them talking to put off that goodbye as long as possible. I asked about their lives, their problems, their suicide plans, and begged them not to hang up the phone. I listened to some of the rawest, most frightening pain I've ever heard. During one call I desperately talked to a woman barely conscious, dying as I listened to her slurred voice. I kept them going until police officers or EMTs arrived before I would carefully say goodbye with all the encouragement in me. Once a police officer took the phone, spoke to me briefly and hung up before I could even ask to say goodbye to the caller. I was left stunned, guilty and sad without that goodbye. Those goodbyes were all I had on my side, because I would never know what happened next or how the story would end. Goodbye was the only resolution I had.

My work made me proud and broke my heart. When I finally chose to say goodbye to the Hotline, it was with conflicted feelings. Part of me felt guilty for saying goodbye, for walking away, for disappearing from the line. After all, there is never enough to go around. At the same time, the goodbye was a relief from the all consuming nature of the work. It changed the way I looked at people everywhere, strengthened my cynicism, gave me more medical knowledge than I ever wanted and estranged me from certain people. It also made me aware, made me see things I had never seen before. It made me a better person, at once harder and more empathetic, more willing to acknowledge all the shadows and shades of gray. It made me work harder to help people, to give them something to hold on to at the other end of the line. In thousands and thousands of goodbyes, I sent a little of myself into the world around me. With every goodbye, I tried to make a difference.