People

“I’ve failed” my broken self tells me. “I shouldn’t be calling anyone, I should suffer in silence.” My hands frantically reach for my phone, browse to the name. Call. The soft waking voice of a close friend resounds in my ear. The tears begin to roll as I ask if we can talk, apologizing profusely through my blubbering and saying I shouldn’t have called. The reassurance that I’ve done the right thing, that yes we can absolutely talk, that it’s important to be here for each other. Within a few minutes I break into a run into the arms of someone who represents a friend, but family. We sit, the words spill, the tears flow, the brokenness pours, and the healing begins.

It’s important to make those phone calls when the world seems to be crashing in on you. It’s important to reach out for help when you know it’s only inches away. Suffering alone never solved anything for anyone.

It’s also important to pick up the phone, to pull yourself out of bed, to be there. It’s important to be inconvenienced. You may very well be the only person in the world someone talks to, it’s important to take that call, to listen, to be that person’s person, because we all need people. We need to cry together, laugh together, live together, and heal together. We all need our people, the ones that love us through it all, even when we’ve made the wrong decisions.

So when your world crashes, when your heart feels seconds away from stopping, when you find yourself in the place of thinking you have too much, reach for the phone, reach for your people, and when those people reach for you, reach back.