I volunteer and a crisis hotline once a week. Most of the time, people who call the line

just need someone to hear them, someone to sit in the darkness with them so they know

that they aren't alone in their suffering. We get calls from all types of people. Distress

teens, drug addicts, people fighting with mental illnesses, elderly folks who have no

one left to share their final days with. Third party callers who know someone who is

displaying suicidal behavior. Many of these calls are silent, or the caller instantly

hangs up. Most calls center around loneliness. People going through hardship often feel

like a burden when sharing their pain with friends and family, so they keep it bottled

up inside where it festers and builds their points with a pain is so overwhelming they

would do anything to make it stop. Our job is to listen and help them find

options. It's not something I normally speak about, but I had one

spin on the other side of the line here. After years of struggling with alcohol addiction

and a series of very bad choices, I'd hit rock bottom and this really had been my

lifeline. Calling the hotline had been the first step on a long journey that I'm still

far from finishing, but after years of therapy and abstinence later I feel that if I can

be that voice that pulls even one person out of that rut, all that might have been

worth something. I remember the first time that caller

unknown called me. Our caller ID usually shows the callers number unless they intentionally

block it, so I thought it was probably a police department or some social service representative

calling. I worked the midnight to 4am shift. I am a pretty nocturnal guy to begin with,

and that shift needed the most help, so I no problem signing up for it. Call volume

is a lot lower during these hours, so it's usually just me and a few other counsellors

...