Long story short because it’s complicated, but I was in a grocery store carpark, crying in my car at bout 7pm on Monday night. When I looked up, there was couple coming towards me. The woman grabbed the handle of the passenger;s side door saying “Oh noo, you need a hug, can I get in your car?” I was not paying attention so it caught me by surprise, which is very, very rare but my brain decided in that second that if she wanted to steal the bags etc, go ahead; that was par the course with the way my life had been going lately.
She snatched opened the door, then she saw that the seat was occupied with the shopping I’d just bought so she shut it and came around to my side. That was when I knew she wasn’t trying to roll me, but maybe she’d stab me instead(?) She squatted down, her lit cigarette blowing into my face, and asked me what was wrong and why I was crying. She looked like the mother of one of my exs in the light from the shopping centre. So, I was getting headfucked at the same time trying to figure out if it was her and how she could possibly be there, that side of the city without her walking aids.
This woman’s teeth were greyish and leaning on each other, in bad condition because…she was a crackhead, and I could tell she’d been drinking because her breath vaguely smelled of stale alcohol. She waved off her boyfriend who was waiting sa few metres away then asked me to tell her what was going on again, while she had her hands on me and holding my arms. So I gave her a brief rundown. I was so emotionally fucked, I actually did it, and she hugged me. She told me certain people weren’t worth it, and how brave I was etc. And it was like being in the bathrooms of a club when there’s a girl crying and you stop and talk to her to get her to see she is fuckn awesome because you don’t want to see a pretty girl’s makeup run anymore at a venue where she should be happy.
I’ve never been that girl, I’m usually one of the ones talking her down and reminding her she can do it, tomorrow is another day, she doesn’t need that shitty job/man/situation/whatever. And if anyone tries to pull that on me, I’m cynical and don’t need it because I’m “smarter” and can figure out my own shit, but this time…I just let it happen. I needed some sort epiphany from a crackhead guru that would hopefully be all I needed somehow.
It wasn’t really anything that made a lightbulb come on, just the usual rhetoric – you’re worth more than this situation kind of thing. Maybe it was all a scam and you don’t deserve this. You are awesome, you are brave and you have to stop crying. Then she started touching my face and literally wiping away my tears and it was creepy, cute and annoying of her…and pathetic (of me.)
I tried to find more meaning in it, because it was out of the ordinary, those kinds of things don’t happen to me. I don’t cry in my car in public, I don’t let people get that close – on a regular day I probably would have run her over, thinking she was trying to steal something or harm me. I probably would have waited until she got round the other side and then kicked her ass lol
My takeaway— was that some people have less, some are crackheads and you might write them off but we are all human and can recognise pain in each other. There are some things that make us all the same. And I felt so stupid but it was good timing, someone was actually kind to me in a moment of exceptional weakness, when the recent turn of events in my life have made me believe GOOD people and things no longer exist.