Nothing makes Carol sadder than the fact she gets the most calls during the holidays. You’d think, after the Blip, more people would be spending Christmas with their families. The forty-ninth ring of the night at 3:01 AM lets her know that’s unfortunately not the case.
“Hello, you’ve reached New York City’s Crisis Hotline,” she says cordially, tapping her pen against her desk. Her eyelids are incredibly droopy. She dips her hand in a glass of water and gently rubs it on her face, praying she won’t end up falling asleep. “My name is Carol. What do you want to talk about this evening?”
There’s shuffling on the other end of the line. Then: “Um, hello, Carol.”
A boy’s voice. Hushed, young. She knows teenagers and young adults call the most, but it still breaks her heart every time. “Hi!” she tries again, this time with a little more chirpiness, waiting for a response.
“Um.” She can hear him swallow on the other line. “I guess—I guess I just wanted to talk about, I don’t know, just wanted to talk to someone, I guess.”
His words come out in a rush. “Of course,” Carol says calmly. “It’s great that you reached out to talk to someone, and we can talk about whatever you decide. Would you mind sharing your name?”
“Peter,” he says, with no hesitation. She makes a note of that.
“Thank you, Peter.” She glances at the clock. “Is it alright if I ask you how you’re feeling right now?”
This time, he takes a while to respond. “Well, lonely.” A short pause, which he fills in. “Tired. More like exhausted, to be honest.”
He doesn’t say anything more, so she responds with: “Thank you for sharing that with me. Do you think there’s any particular reason you’re feeling that way?” She’s never really liked having to ask that question, but it was apart of her training. Of course there’s a particular reason. Many times, upon hearing that question, callers laugh out of pain, or get understandably scornful.
Peter doesn’t seem to, however. “There’s a lot,” he says, almost a whisper. “I don’t even know how to unpack it all.”
“That’s okay. You don’t have to—”
“It’s Christmas,” he suddenly says. “Sorry. Um. I guess trying to say, it’s Christmas, and I’m alone.”
Initially, his voice had been rather quiet. Now he’s speaking quite loudly, which most likely signifies he’s literally alone, and this saddens her. “I’m really sorry to hear that, Peter,” she says softly.
“It’s okay. I’m just not used to this. Being alone, I mean. Especially today.” She’s about to ask why exactly he’s alone in that professional way of hers, but he lets it all out with: “Me and my friend, we had sleepovers on Christmas Eve. We’d always watch Elf and Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer, and my aunt—” he lets out a shuddering breath — “she’d get those sugar cookies. You know, the ones people always debate on whether they’re actually good or not. They crumble on your tongue, kind of, and they’re fine, but a little...synthetic tasting. Do you know what I’m talking about?”
Bless his heart, she thinks. She doesn’t have a clue, but she’d made a lot of notes. His aunt, and his friend, speaking about them in past tense. “I think I do.”
“Yeah, well, those. I bought them earlier. They taste…Now they taste like shit.”
“Hmm. I see. Sometimes that happens when we have really strong memories associated.” She needs to find out the nature of those relationships, why they seem to have ended, so she continues with, “Is there no way to have that tradition carry on?”
The heavy silence that follows lets her guess his answer will make her heart sink, and she’s right. “My aunt died.”
She rubs her temples. “I am so sorry, Peter.”
“But it’s my fault,” he croaks, and it shatters her heart. “I’m the reason why.”
She’s a bit taken aback, then figures it must be survivor’s guilt, or something along those lines. She’s had some genuinely terrifying confessions before, though, and she really hopes she won’t get one on Christmas Day. “Sometimes, Peter,” she phrases her words carefully, “when something terrible happens, we appoint the blame to ourselves in order—”
“But it is my fault,” his voice rises. “I made a mistake, I fucked up so bad and now I’m never going to see her again, I—” He lets out a choked sob. “I’m sorry.”
Her stomach churns, but she remains cool and collected nonetheless. “You have nothing to be sorry about, Peter. It’s a good thing to be in touch with your emotions.”
He laughs, then, a little. “Well, it’s not hard. All I do is feel. I’m so fucking sick of feeling. I thought by now I would be numb, or something close to that, but—fuck. I have no one to share anything with. I have no one. So it just builds up inside me until I feel like I’m physically splitting in two.”
Carol takes off her glasses. She rummages through the “appropriate response booklet,” then decides to fuck it and try to let it come from her. This kid is striking so many emotions in her right now and she can’t quite pinpoint why. “I’m sorry, Peter. How about your friend?”
“My friend?”
“You mentioned a friend earlier.”
“Oh. Yeah. He’s not dead. But I’m, like, dead to him.” He lets out another laugh. “It’s okay, though. I deserve it.”
Oh, God. She rubs more water on her face, not to feel more awake, but to collect herself. “Again, I am so sorry. Do you feel like you’ve lost everyone in your life in some form?”
“I don’t feel that way,” he says bitterly. “That’s just the way it fucking is. Sorry, I don’t want to sound angry. It’s, like, it’s my girlfriend—I mean, she’s not. She’s not my girlfriend anymore. I saw her with someone. And she looked.” His voice cracks. “She looked happy.”
“That is a difficult thing to go through,” she says quietly. Break-ups. More comfortable territory. She leans back in her seat, about to offer her advice but he once again fills in the silence, so heartbreakingly.
“Yeah,” he says quietly. “Have you ever gone through it?”
Now she’s very taken aback. It’s very rare for a caller to ask for personal details, but she’s been instructed to keep it very vague. “ I have, Peter. And it’s pretty terrible.”
“Did you ever feel like telling them, like, reminding them of all the good times? Just go up to them and try to explain?”
“Of course I did. That’s human. But sometimes…Sometimes you have to let a person move on, so you can move on. It’s usually the healthier option.”
“Yeah,” he says defeatedly. “I know. Trust me, I know. And I hate it. I hate having to move on. I just keep remembering — I keep remembering better days. It’s driving me crazy. And I hate having to say this, but there’s no point in me existing.”
And so begins her protocol. Her heart is in her throat. “Peter, that—”
“I know what you’re going to say. I’ve called here before. They always say that I have a lot to live for, a lot of experiences waiting for me. But none of it is with the people I care about. It’s…There’s no point of me existing when I’m invisible, in every sense. And I’m not going to stop existing, so I know, you don’t have to ask if I’m a threat to myself or others. Only others because I fuck everything up. I’ve lost every good thing in my life. I just can’t stop existing, though, because I’m hoping one day things can get better. But the world doesn’t need me, not exactly, not me, and my impact, whatever I built, it’s all gone — I make no difference.”
And Carol knows how he feels. The forty-eight other people who called her tonight know how he feels. She can’t even begin to properly summarize how universal it is, so clouded by sadness to live a life defined by it. She knows what the appropriate response booklet says, but she tells him what she wishes she could’ve heard at her lowest. “But you have, Peter.”
He lets out a breath. “What?”
“You’ve made an impact on me tonight. I do this because I’m alone too. I do this because I’ve lost so many good things in my life from those terrifying feelings, almost lost myself from them. But I go on, like you said, in the hope things can get better. And they’re a little better after hearing I’m not alone in feeling alone.”
“That—” His voice cracks. “That means a lot to me, thank you.” She can hear a beeping in the background. “I have to—I have to go to work, sorry. Um. Thank you, Carol, really. You’ve really helped me tonight.”
She can’t even begin to describe how much that means to her. “Thank you, I’m glad to have been of assistance,” she says, wiping the tears off her face as she goes back to trained professionalism.
“Before I go—can you just say Merry Christmas to me, please?”
“Of course. Merry Christmas.”
“But like, with my name. I hope that doesn’t sound creepy — it’s just. I want to hear someone say my name. God, that sounds creepy.”
She laughs. “No, it doesn’t sound creepy. Merry Christmas, Peter.”
“Merry Christmas, Carol,” he says. She can hear a little chuckle. The line goes dead, and another rings.