BeatingBush Helpline
(Sometime in spring 2004)
“I haven’t left my house in four days. Where would I go?” D____ told me. He was very much out of a job, and mad as to how unprepared we’d been upon leaving what now seemed like a $150K four-year summer camp. We were all in this same boat—nobody, not one with a real job—but he was taking it pretty hard.
“Well what the hell do you do all day?”
“I dunno. I stopped smoking pot so much. Mostly I read news.”
“Oh, that’s not good…”
“I sent out four more cover letters yesterday, including one to a 7-11. If none of that works and I don’t have a job in two weeks, I might kill myself.”
“Whoa, come on man.”
I didn’t really believe that these four cover letters would be the last straws for D___, who has been flirting with the suicidal for as long as I’ve known him. But this time there might be cause to be nervous – he’d lived in a place with no friends and shitty jobs for a year. Now, he’d hit the postgraduate stride of the worst kind: living at home. Applying to 7-11. Not good. I tried to remember any advice for dealing with suicidal displays… nothing. So I just tried to lay the smack down.
“Dude, fuck that."
...
“I’ll tell you what you can do: go on to John Kerry dot com or some shit like that, and volunteer for the campaign this summer. You’ve got six months where you can scrape by as a volunteer, maybe even get a job out of it. In the meantime, you’ll be doing the most important work there is.”
We talked for a little while longer, and he expressed only the slightest interest at my idea. But as we talked, my advice began to sound better and better. Even if he was stuffing envelopes, at least it would be stuffing envelopes with all the power of the anger welled up inside of him. Otherwise, it just kind of simmers there, it starts to turn you sick. I was almost angry at him for it. Take away some friends, a blossoming romance and all that—I wasn’t so far from his position myself. No job and no particularly strong desire to get one, wracked with fear about forces entirely beyond my control.
“Listen, go check out one of those websites. Call me in a week, or whenever you want. And stop reading the news. Get a book or something.”
“I haven’t left my house in four days. Where would I go?” D____ told me. He was very much out of a job, and mad as to how unprepared we’d been upon leaving what now seemed like a $150K four-year summer camp. We were all in this same boat—nobody, not one with a real job—but he was taking it pretty hard.
“Well what the hell do you do all day?”
“I dunno. I stopped smoking pot so much. Mostly I read news.”
“Oh, that’s not good…”
“I sent out four more cover letters yesterday, including one to a 7-11. If none of that works and I don’t have a job in two weeks, I might kill myself.”
“Whoa, come on man.”
I didn’t really believe that these four cover letters would be the last straws for D___, who has been flirting with the suicidal for as long as I’ve known him. But this time there might be cause to be nervous – he’d lived in a place with no friends and shitty jobs for a year. Now, he’d hit the postgraduate stride of the worst kind: living at home. Applying to 7-11. Not good. I tried to remember any advice for dealing with suicidal displays… nothing. So I just tried to lay the smack down.
“Dude, fuck that."
...
“I’ll tell you what you can do: go on to John Kerry dot com or some shit like that, and volunteer for the campaign this summer. You’ve got six months where you can scrape by as a volunteer, maybe even get a job out of it. In the meantime, you’ll be doing the most important work there is.”
We talked for a little while longer, and he expressed only the slightest interest at my idea. But as we talked, my advice began to sound better and better. Even if he was stuffing envelopes, at least it would be stuffing envelopes with all the power of the anger welled up inside of him. Otherwise, it just kind of simmers there, it starts to turn you sick. I was almost angry at him for it. Take away some friends, a blossoming romance and all that—I wasn’t so far from his position myself. No job and no particularly strong desire to get one, wracked with fear about forces entirely beyond my control.
“Listen, go check out one of those websites. Call me in a week, or whenever you want. And stop reading the news. Get a book or something.”
posted by Greg Bloom at 4/11/2005 12:08:00 AM
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