It's the time of the year when people take stock of their lives and just don't like what they see. They feel like failures. But the statistics don't tell the whole story, the hours of stress that workers like Patsy Ellington spend trying to talk someone out of ending their lives, the nightmares that come from the failures. Most suicide counselors know that they talk most people out of suicide, but it's still the failures that haunt their dreams. But it's not enough.
Failure means they do it, usually on the phone, while the counselor listens.
Patsy still wakes up screaming from a failure two years ago, on Christmas Eve. The teenager on the phone had called many times before, always asking for Patsy. She thought he was making progress. He was getting therapy and seemed to working his way through the problems of adolescence. He was depressed because he didn't have a girl friend to share Christmas with.