I’ve got a crying-in-front-of-a-stranger story.
Long story: Five years ago I was pretty lost. I was drinking a lot (like near blackout almost every night) and partying five nights a week. My best friend was just as bad and had moved in with me. She started dating my brother. One night all three of us are hanging out at my dads house, drinking and smoking weed. Having a great night until the two of them decide to “play a joke” and point out all of my insecurities in a “joking” way. Shit like, “you’re so unhappy with yourself you have to drink just to hang out by yourself.”
It ended up in a huge argument and I just left. I went to a nearby location that was a comfort spot. It was a town I’d always gone to with my parents as a child and a place that still holds a very special place in my heart - I find it calming and it’s one of those places where I’m just home.
Anyway, I found myself there sitting on a dock in the canal just absolutely sobbing. I was having a moment where I realized everything that was wrong with my life and I didn’t know how to fix it. I just felt completely helpless. It was dawn and the scene was so gorgeous so I took a quiet minute to take it all in and suddenly realized I was being watched.
I looked up and saw an old Native man just watching me with this huge toothless smile. I did that thing where you just pretend to be invisible - if I don’t acknowledge anyone they can’t see me, right? A few moments later I realized he was down on the dock, standing right next to me still grinning. I was honestly pretty terrified - I was a young, small woman all alone at dawn in a place where no one knew where I was with a stranger who was clearly fixated on me.
Eventually he asks if he can buy a cigarette off of me. I say no and just hand him the cigarette. We sat there for a few minutes in silence just smoking and taking in the sunrise. He finally broke the silence and started asking me questions. But not small talk - he was asking me questions like, “why are you unhappy?” “How do you plan to change that?” “What can you do to make your relationships better?” Etc.
It was one of the most profound human interactions I’ve ever had. It was precisely what I needed in that moment to look inside myself and get my shit together.
Within the next six weeks I’d quit my job and moved to another state to get away from my problems and start over. It took me another nine months to really quit abusing substances and get a job in my field, meet someone who was healthy for me (my now husband!) and challenge me to be my best self, and severe all those toxic relationship that kept drowning me.
It was such a weird experience but I think about it often. He was a total stranger, probably just a fisherman getting ready to get going for the day, and he had such a huge impact on such a pivotal moment in my life.