Live January 11th – January 17th

Originally Posted January 3rd, 2011

Before PostSecret, I was a volunteer on a national suicide prevention hotline called, Hopeline.

One Hopeline call I’ll never forget began deep in the night with a polite conversation between a young woman and me.

The early part of the call sounds like the friendly back and forth that happens during a first date.

We develop a strong rapport.

She tells me she is hurting after a recent betrayal from a friend and feels alone.

I listen.

That’s the most important thing we learned during Hopeline training:
don’t judge,
don’t try to be a problem solver.
Create a safe space where a person can feel free to say anything,
Speak with a voice of compassion, and listen.

Then she tells me, like she’s whispering it in my ear,

“I’ve been thinking about killing myself.”

Do you have a specific plan, I ask.

“Yes,” she says.

I hear her walking around her apartment.

She tells me she’s not drinking or taking meds, but her words are slurring.

Suddenly, I hear a loud thud.

I ask her about it.

She tells me she just slammed her sliding glass door shut and now she’s on her balcony, sitting on the ledge.

“How many floors up are you?”

“Seven.”

I try to keep my voice calm and reassuring,
but my vocal cords are tightening and my pulse is racing.

“Will you promise me you won’t take your life tonight?”

She doesn’t answer the question.

I write down a request for my hotline partner to call our shift supervisor and 911.

Minutes pass, and I feel like we’re making progress when suddenly she sounds scared and angry–someone’s pounding on her front door

I tell her it’s probably the police.

“I sent them to help you. Is that okay?”

She stops talking to me.

I feel like I’ve betrayed her and lost her trust,
like I’ve lost her.

My partner is in direct contact with the police, and tells me that because she isn’t opening the door, the police are going to force their way into her apartment.

I tell her what’s about to happen.

I hear them pounding . . .

I hear her sobbing . . .

I hear muffled voices that I can’t understand.

My hotline partner hands me a note that reads;

The police are in the apartment looking through a locked sliding glass door at the girl sitting on the ledge.
She’s jammed the door from the outside.
Get her to open it!

I can no longer hear anyone on the line but I start talking on faith.

“I can feel the ledge you’re sitting on because I’ve been there too.
I understand why you don’t want to unlock the door.”

I tell her about the insomnia that pushed me to plan my death.
I describe how hard it was to open up to a psychiatrist and share my secret.
I explain how I was able to find my way through the pain.
And that talking to her, right now is, part of my healing.

I tell her, “you’re saving me.”

I ask her to stand up off the ledge, and as I say it I feel myself standing up from my chair.

My partner relays the information from the police that the girl is standing too, facing them, and walking back to the glass door.

—email—
To the person who feels horrible for telling their child there is no Santa. My son just wrote Santa last night asking for that special present. And I didn’t have the heart to tell him that “Santa’s” back injury has kept her from waiting tables these past two weeks, and with no child support check these past 7 months, all the other bills are adding up too. And the local charity is saying the application deadline is past, and they can’t guarantee anything specific.
What’s my secret?
I wish Santa Claus was real, so on Christmas, no child would have to go without, and no parent would have to feel like they failed their child.
-Amber

And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly: what is essential is invisible to the eye.

— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

The seed that grew into PostSecret was planted during an extraordinary dream I had my first night in Paris. After flying all night, I arrived at the Charles de Gaulle Airport on a cold and wet December morning. I caught a taxi to my hotel in the Latin Quarter but before going inside I took a personal detour down the serpentine streets exploring some historic bookstores, warm cafés and tourist shops.

I was shivering when I finally checked into my hotel that night still carrying my luggage and the only items I had purchased that day: three postcards from the Antoine de Saint-Exupéry story, The Little Prince.

In my room, I felt a gratified exhaustion as I prepared for bed. The last thing I did before falling asleep was place my three postcards in the nightstand drawer. During the night, I had a lucid dream. This was not the first time I was aware while dreaming, but this vision in my dark hotel room would redirect my life and eventually lead me to the PostSecret project.

In my dream, I was alone my room – the same hotel room where I was having the dream itself. I saw the nightstand, wondered if my postcards would be inside, and walked over to see. When I opened the drawer all three were there but each one had been altered.

The first postcard looked like it had aged 50 years. The next one had been cut like a shell and the last one looked upside down and had a pattern of holes resembling a neural network. I got excited when I turned them over and saw messages on the back. I knew with my heart beating faster I would be pulled out of my dream soon so I tried to take some mental pictures.

One message I couldn’t understand at the time. Another one was about a ‘reluctant oracle’ and the last one read:

unrecognized evidence

of forgotten journeys

unknowingly rediscovered

I woke up a few moments later and instantly tried to recall how they had appeared in my dream. Then I took the actual postcards out of the drawer and worked to recreate each one as I had seen it. I didn’t know it then, but that artwork would be the first in a trilogy of postcard projects that would eventually turn my life upside-down and reveal a hidden world.

I continue to keep postcards around my bed at night to search for in my dreams.