When Will You Make My Phone Ring?

“Yeah, tired of chasing old dreams, tired of wasting days
Tired of waking mornings just to wait for you till late
Tired of searching high, tired of getting low
Tired of listening hard just to wait for you to know that

I want you in everything
In everything, in anything I do
When will you make my phone ring
And tell me I can't give you anything
Anything at all now?”

Deacon Blue, When Will You Make My Telephone Ring? (1988)

One of the darkest days of my life involved being laid-off from a job. It was devastating, totally out of the blue. I never felt so numb in my life. Denial kicked-in, but it couldn’t mask the obvious questions that still ached through my mind: What am I gonna do? How will I pay my bills? What if I can’t find another job any time soon?

I felt empty and void inside as I headed home that day. I was in a fog and felt like I was moving through each moment in slow motion. Once I got home, I flopped down into a chair and stared at my telephone. I desperately wanted it to ring. “If only Tony would call me…” “If only John would call me…” “Oh, God! If only Eric would call me! God, can’t they feel my pain? Don’t they know I need someone to care enough to pick up their phone and call me right now? Don’t YOU care enough GOD? Don’t you care enough to help them to help me?!!!!!!!!!”

I sat in anguish the whole rest of the evening waiting for that damn telephone to ring—and never once did it do so. I went to bed hurt and angry, not only with my employer, but with my friends and especially with God. I had heard plenty about mental telepathy and how people who are close to you instinctively know when something is wrong. They start thinking about you and then they pick up the phone and call you, right? Well, not in my case…

And so began the outpouring of even deeper devastating feelings. All of those long held, negative self-beliefs flooded my mind: “See, it’s because I’m not good enough. No one really loves me or cares about me. I’m just a worthless piece of shit. If I died right now, people might feel sorry for a few days but then they’d merrily forget me…”

As far as I can remember, never once did it ever cross my mind to pick up my phone and call Tony or John or Eric or anyone else, least of all my parents. There was no way in those days of my deepest, darkest codependency that I could have ever have asked for help. The concept wasn’t even on the agenda.

Reaching out and asking for help is a problem that plagues almost every codependent. And it’s rooted in poor self-worth. We don’t believe we are valuable enough persons to warrant the right to ask for and receive help from others. We think we don’t count and so to ask for help would be to bother or burden someone else.

In addition, so many of us are fearful of rejection or abandonment if we do take the risk of asking for help. And because we have faced so much rejection in our lives—primarily from parents and ourselves—we just can’t fathom one more emotional slap across our faces. We fear that we would crumble into millions of little pieces and that no one, not even God, could ever put those pieces back together.

And so, when we are facing our darkest days, we wait for our telephones to ring. We hope and pray that someone will feel our pain and come to our rescue, without our having to ever ask.

In recovery, we learn that it’s not only necessary to ask for help when we need help, but it’s OK to ask. We learn to believe that we have value and that we are worth someone taking the time to hear us and to validate our pain. We are worth receiving the help, love and empathy that we need.

We also learn that it’s our responsibility to reach out when we need help, instead of expecting that others should reach out to us. Reaching out means honestly asking for help, as opposed to doing a manipulative dance around the fact that we need help. In the past, we may have feigned sadness, hoping that someone would pick up on the vibe and voluntarily ask us “what’s wrong?” But no more. That is codependently manipulative behavior at its worst.

Today, when I’m faced with a dark hour I'm honest about it. I pick up my phone and I call a friend. I tell the person I am having a rough time and I just need to be heard—not fixed. I just want to be heard and I want my pain validated—that’s all I need to get my balance back. I’m worth it. And everyone is worth it.

So I no longer sit hopelessly wondering “When will you make my telephone ring?” I take care of me by reaching out to others who are safe because I am the only one who can rescue me.