... and therefore a bit impressionable, but I think everyone should watch this. Especially having graduated from Mills, I think this is incredible.
I had such an intense night. Interpersonal struggles, crazy thoughts in my own head, worries, realizations, and such an emotionally charged encounter with someone on the street.
A middle-aged African American woman came up to me as I was leaving a restaurant in Uptown, Oakland. "Excuse me," she said, "I'm so sorry to ask, but do you have a phone that can look stuff up?" I must have looked confused because, ironically, I had left my phone in my father's car not two hours before and had just been working out a way to get it back before he drove back to Santa Cruz. She was rather shaky, this woman, and added, "I'm so sorry for asking, - I swear I'm not gonna hurt you or anything."
Even this comment made me step back mentally. What kind of a screwed up world do we live in? This goes back to the strangers conversation I rambled on about the other day. That she would have to assure me, poor tiny white girl, that she wouldn't hurt me - that my automatic reaction would be to be worried about being hurt by her - just makes me sick.
In any case, I told her I didn't have my phone. She took a deep breath and all of a sudden, I could see that she was trying very, very hard not to cry. "Do you - do you know the number of a shelter for women? Somewhere I could --" and she had to stop to fight off the tears.
Everything in my head about the evening I had planned came to a screeching halt.
The story of the rest of my evening isn't something I will go into here, but I am so happy that I was the one she talked to. Moreover, I'm so happy that I listened. How many people had just walked past and not listened? I could have so easily not listened.
This world is complicated. By the end of our interaction, I was convinced it was no hoax, but the awful thing was that I kept wondering that for most of our conversation.
This tears me up inside. I want to give a sweeping statement like, "Just on the chance that it might really be such a serious situation for a person, we should always listen and help." But isn't the need for food a serious situation, and don't I ignore people asking for money to buy food every single day on my way to work? How do you know when someone is telling the truth? How do you know if you are giving really to help a person or to assuage your own guilt at having one the social or genetic lottery? Does it matter which of those two it is?
Let me know if you have an answer.
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