I had seen the flyers. They were always there, plastered onto the walls of the first bathroom stall of the campus center, asking if I was confused or depressed or stressed. Confused? Depressed? Stressed? Of course I was. What Wesleyan student isn’t? So when the flyers went on to encourage me to call and talk to someone about everything, I was sure the invitation wasn’t directed at me. I was just another homesick, freaked out, unsure freshman—it’s not as though I needed help coping with my crack addiction or had recently discovered my mother actually worked as a stripper and I was having a hard time dealing. So I blew off those flyers, thinking I would never need to call 8-to-8. But then the night came when I was especially confused, and a little more depressed and just slightly more stressed than normal. I thought about who to call, but my mind drew a blank. All my friends were busy with homework and issues of their own and I didn’t really want to call my parents, crying, for the third time. I was about to resign myself to a long night of crying and loneliness when I remembered those flyers I had seen. “Why not,” I thought to myself as I picked up the receiver and dialed the extension. “It won’t make things worse,” I figured. The phone rang until I heard on the other end: “Hi, 8-to-8, this is—” I froze as I realized I had actually called a real person. “Hi…” I said slowly. “Hey, how’s everything going tonight?” the voice on the other end asked me. “Wait, so I just…talk?” I asked. The voice reassured me that that was exactly right. So, I did. I just started talking and talking…and talking. I talked about everything that was going bad and everything that was going well. I talked about all that I was scared about and everything I was excited for. I talked continuously, interrupted only by gently murmured mm-hm’s and softly spoken ok’s from the listener. And that was precisely what I felt like the person on the other end was doing: listening. And I don’t mean just waiting for breaks to say their opinion. I mean actually, truly, whole-heartedly listening to what I was saying with an open and non-judgmental ear. Occasionally the listener would ask me questions, leading me to think about things perhaps in new ways or to arrive at conclusions I may not have otherwise found, but I never felt like I was being told what to do (or not do). In the crazy, busy world we live in, I had forgotten how good it feels to have someone listen to you as though they have all the time in the world.
Although I was a little nervous at first, I could not be more thankful that I decided to call 8-to-8 that night. I have called several times since then, sometimes with serious issues, other times simply to ask for a phone number that I’m too lazy to look up. No matter what I’m calling for, I always know that there is someone on the other end of the line who is willing to listen. I decided to share my experience with all of you because I think 8-to-8 is a really important resource on this campus. There is no reason to feel like you have nowhere to turn to when you need to complain, vent, whine, bitch, whatever. Every person on this campus should know that between the hours of 7 p.m. and 7 a.m., there is ALWAYS someone to hear you.
8-to-8
x7789
7 p.m.-7 a.m.
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