His phone lit up at all hours. Friends going through breakups. Colleagues needing advice. His sister during her divorce. He was the person people knew they could call.
He was good at it. He listened. He didn’t panic. He knew how to be present without making other people’s problems about himself.
He went through a hard period in his mid-thirties and told almost nobody. Not because he didn’t want to. Because the role he had built didn’t have room for it. He was the helper. He didn’t know how to be the one who needed help.
The person everyone turns to often develops an identity around being the stable one. It works until the stable one is not stable. Then there is nowhere to go, because to need help is to break the role that everyone depends on. The helper’s loneliness is specific. It’s not that nobody cares. It’s that nobody thinks to ask.
I’ve been the person people came to. I know the warmth of being needed and the particular hollowness of not knowing how to let people return the favor. The helper’s side of the relationship is easy. The receiving side requires a vulnerability that many of us who play this role have spent years avoiding.
He went through a hard period. He managed. He’s fine now.
His friends still don’t know it happened.
What would it take for him to make space for someone to help him?
Being the person people call is not the same as being close to people. It’s being useful to them. Closeness goes both ways. It requires letting someone into your mess, not just into your availability.
He is still the one people call. He is still not sure how to call back with something that isn’t advice.
Some things worth sitting with:
- Are you someone people come to? Who do you go to?
- Have you been through something difficult recently that nobody in your life knows about?
- What would it take to let someone be there for you the way you’re there for others?
Something similar runs through She Was the One Everyone Called. Nobody Thought to Call Her., if you want to keep sitting with it.
Inspired by a real story shared anonymously online.