Today marks five years at this job. I was 18 years old when I started, and to say this work fundamentally changed my brain would be an understatement.

My first lesson came quickly: you can’t save everyone. It was my first night taking calls when there was a mass shooting. There were multiple victims spread throughout an apartment complex, one of them outside my caller’s patio door, begging him for help. Shots were still ringing out, so I advised him to stay inside his apartment, as it was unsafe to render aid. This lesson has repeated itself many times since. I’ve told a mother not to enter a burning house to save her son, and I’ve listened to a caller describe watching his neighbor be electrocuted to death after stepping into a puddle of water with live wires.

Not every call is entirely hopeless, and I think that’s what keeps me sane. The situation may be traumatic regardless, but I still have the power not to make it worse. Sometimes, at the end of a call, I take a moment to tell the caller they did a good job and remind them to take care of themselves. Other times, especially when children are involved, I help them remove themselves from a situation they shouldn’t have to be in. I’ve also learned the importance of remaining respectful. Even when I can’t change the outcome, I can still choose how I treat the person on the other end of the line.

I’ve learned that you never really know what someone is going through. Some people are verbally abusive for seemingly no reason, but there have been plenty of times when I’ve remained calm and kind despite being insulted, only for the caller to eventually apologize and tell me what they’ve been dealing with. Most of the time, I don’t get an apology, and I may never know what was going on in that person’s life. Still, I hope my kindness made a difference, even if I never got to see it.

I’ve also learned to appreciate the mundane, both inside and outside of work. At work, I enjoy the simple calls, whether that means directing someone to the animal shelter’s website to help them find their dog or answering a kid’s prank call. There’s something comforting about being reminded that not every problem is a tragedy and not every call ends with someone having the worst day of their life. Outside of work, I’ve come to appreciate the repetitiveness of everyday life for much the same reason. There’s comfort in knowing that, despite everything I hear and everything I carry home with me, the world keeps turning. My routines return. The ordinary things are still there. Eventually, I feel like myself again.

Of course, not everything returns to the way it was. In some ways, I don’t think it ever will. I don’t carry the same sadness I did after the worst call of my career, but I do have a more negative view of the world than I did five years ago. One of the hardest things to accept is that not everything has meaning or a higher purpose. Sometimes, there is no greater lesson to be learned from something terrible. Sometimes people just suck.

The first time I was sent home after a call it was because a father repeatedly shot his wife in front of their two young children before turning the gun on himself when police arrived. I heard every shot. That night, I drove for two hours, and the only time I felt any peace was when I accepted that there might be no meaning to what had happened. That the world can be a dark, awful place sometimes, and that there may be no explanation that makes it any less so. I still get nauseous when I think about that call.

But I don’t think that means nothing has meaning.

I’ve had calls that have reminded me why I do this job, too. I’ve written before about believing that certain calls find their way to certain people, and how trusting my gut has resulted in some pretty incredible saves. I get called a “shit magnet” at work because of how many bad calls I receive. Maybe it’s just bad luck, or maybe there’s no reason for it at all. But I choose to believe that, sometimes, I’m the right person to take a particular call. Maybe the things I’ve experienced have made me better equipped to help someone going through something similar. I hope I am, at least.

Five years ago, I was 18 years old and had no idea what this job would ask of me, or how much of it I would carry with me. I’m still learning how to make sense of what I hear, what I can change, and what I have to accept. I don’t think there’s a final lesson to take away from this job, but I’m always learning, and that may be the most important lesson of all.