Strangers Your unexpected therapist
[Music]
your hand
if you like the game of hide and seek i
do too
there was the thrill of hiding knowing
that your annoying brother or sister
couldn’t find you
even when they kept searching everywhere
and screaming your name
it made you feel important and it was
exciting that someone is expending a lot
of energy
to actually see you in this game we are
rewarded for hiding
and we get the attention we seek but in
the real world
when we keep everything so hidden we are
rarely seen
and the attention we seek is never given
to us
what i’ve come to realize is those who
really see me
are people that don’t even know me
last year i was walking out of my
algebra class and apparently
it was that time of the month so let me
break this down gently
metaphorically i was a french fry with a
huge blob of ketchup on me
of all the amazing subtle colors of the
universe
why couldn’t our cycle color be pale or
even colorless
but of course not it has to be red so
i’m frantically walking backwards in
hopes that no one would see my massive
stain
and i was paranoid that someone would
try to take a picture that’s all i
needed
to be plastered on social media as
hashtag frenchfry girl
this could have happened because it’s
high school and it’s a way to for crowd
than y’all
so luckily on that day a girl i had
never met
asked me if i was okay before i could
even answer she threw her sweater at me
and told me to wrap it around my waist
and then poof problem solved i spent the
next couple of days looking for this
girl and i finally saw her when i was
walking out of my physics class
i told her she’d been the greatest
friend ever to me and save me from
intense humiliation
she looked at me and said ria we’d never
be friends
and walked away i was so taken aback
and then realized that she was probably
right but i’ll come back to that
after endless failed attempts to talk to
sweater girl she finally agreed to meet
i’ll call her jane i kept pressing her
on why she insisted we would never be
close
she said her life was super complicated
and if she were to reveal to her friends
what was actually going on they would
just run away
as it turns out jane’s mother had been
extremely abusive forcing her to move in
with her grandparents
and unfortunately they just kept
defending her mother’s erratic behavior
we spoke for hours that day and i
remember two things about the
conversation
it was raw and effortless
jane is still extremely guarded we don’t
have a traditional friendship
we don’t go to the mall she doesn’t come
over but i couldn’t care less
because we share an incredible
connection on what really
matters and it got me thinking that
sometimes when we choose our friends we
bond over the low hanging fruits
for example if i were to take a poll of
people in this room
who enjoys watching movies eating good
food and dreams about traveling to
beautiful countries
i think we would all be the best of
friends why
because we share the same interest and
what makes us happy
so what happens when we flip this
what if we were bold enough to connect
on what makes us truly sad and dark
what if there was a website called
shatter.com
where we bonded on the intense pain we
are going through
in this site you could post the not so
fantastic news in your life
where you can reveal to others that you
are sick and tired
of pleasing everyone that the stifling
relationships you’re in
draw more comfort than having to speak
your mind
and stand alone that crippling
self-doubt is your constant companion
and on a daily basis you feel nothing
except the agony of being a massive
fraud
in this site you can tell others that
you are broke mired in debt
that your spending is a manifestation of
the profound
emptiness you feel and can never fill
that you are embroiled in bitter legal
battles with your
own flesh and blood
sounds like a webpage you would never go
to and you probably wouldn’t buy any
souvenirs from this site
so how come the site that no one visits
is the one we’re all most familiar with
and this webpage could never launch
because we all know that our medical
history is private our mental health is
private our finances are private
our legal issue are private our grades
are private our salary is private
and if these privacy laws were broken
something happens we would be completely
exposed but isn’t it odd
that everything that truly reveals the
actual pain and suffering we are going
through is
always private we have been conditioned
to believe
that privacy protects us in fact
the global cyber security industry is
valued at 156
billion dollars we spend
an enormous amount of money to ensure
that no one can really know
or understand us so
just to reassure everyone i’m not
advocating that everything needs to be
revealed
i’m just saying it shouldn’t come as any
great surprise
when the friendships and relationships
in our lives
may often seem convenient or empty
because we keep everything so hidden
and that’s why the connections we have
with strangers
can be so profound we want privacy
because it allows us to control the
narratives of
our lives but more importantly it allows
us to control what
others think of us but this can’t be
done with strangers
when we try so hard to control our image
and how others perceive us it gets
exhausting
overwhelming and understandably
sometimes
we just crack at that moment
when a stranger reaches out to us it is
so pure
because they stand to gain nothing
they just want to ease our pain and show
us their humanity
this can be life altering when they
speak to us
there’s no preparation no dress
rehearsal
they are also caught off guard the
advice they give us
isn’t polished or refined because they
have no history no data points no
patterns of our
behavior no expectation of us
they are just speaking their truth
and sometimes this is the authenticity
we crave from our own family and friends
but because they fear being rejected by
us
they sometimes say nothing or
they just tell us what we want to hear
even when
every fiber in their body violently
disagrees
and this can be a two-way street when
something bad happens to us
who do we turn to often times this isn’t
a parent spouse or friend
we don’t tell them because we are
ashamed and don’t want to burden them
so ironically the ones that would help
us at any cost
and go to any length to rescue us remain
in the dark
because we are terrified of worrying or
hurting them
and that’s why the connections we have
with strangers can be so beneficial
when jane reached out to me that day she
knew nothing about me
she just knew at that moment i was
unraveling so the next time i was at
school
and heard a girl sobbing in the bathroom
stall next to me
i didn’t rush out to give her her
privacy i knew she had no intention of
telling me what was going on
but in that moment she revealed
everything because her pain was intense
i was a nobody to her and she felt
safe some people may say i’m scared to
talk to those that i don’t know
i don’t want to be nosy i need to give
others their space i have too much going
on in my own life i’m a private shy
person
i don’t want to be perceived as nuts
these can
all be justifiable reasons but the next
time that you see a stranger
who is visibly distraught or embarrassed
or lost at work school
a grocery store a restaurant a
competition the streets
don’t walk away just always ask them if
they are okay
you are not saving everyone you are just
acknowledging their pain it’s easy to
justify
why we should keep our distance from
strangers we tell ourselves
i’ll just surround myself with people
who i know who are highly educated
successful and look normal and that way
they won’t be a bad influence on me or
my family
and i’ll still be empathetic to others
outside my close circle of friends
but i don’t want to associate with them
because they may be damaged and they
aren’t my problem
and we can go a step further to justify
our detachment
especially with those we feel have
brought on their own
doom and gloom this happens a lot in
high school
so and so deserves an std because they
are such a and why do we have to
help the drug addicts because they
choose to get high
and ruin their lives so logically
we don’t reach out to any of these folks
but the consequences of
anyone’s actions may be from a lifetime
of poor decisions
or it could be from just one stupid
mistake
one fleeting bad decision
either way does it even really matter
consequences don’t judge so why should
we
they just show up unannounced and so
should we
we just need the courage to do so
even if it’s for a person we don’t know
or we think is messed up or crazy
how about we stop demonizing the word
crazy and realize
it’s just another rung in our dna most
of us either come from crazy families
or crazy ourselves or we drive others
crazy
so when you distance yourself from
strangers you are just missing
out on a great opportunity to understand
yourself and the next time you are out
with your friends
ask yourself what do i really know about
them
what’s troubling them was i able to help
in any capacity
or did their pain make me feel
uncomfortable or worse yet
was it a source of gossip to really
connect
with one another let’s stop keeping
everything so
private and start fearlessly bonding
over our pain
how about we let go of the intense
desire
to control how our friends and family
perceive us
let’s stop disinfecting our stories
photoshopping our
images and suppressing what we really
want to say
we’re told to fake it till we make it
hide or blemishes stay cool act calm
don’t burn down don’t burn any bridges
and then we wonder why no one really
gets us i’ll tell you who will
chances are it could turn out to be a
complete
stranger
you