It was election night last year, so maybe the threshold for remembering isn't perfectly met, but I'll go ahead anyway. I'm a university student in the United Kingdom, and I was terrified of how the election would end up, especially being so far away from home, but my father had been texting me since he woke up that the campaign team was preparing 45 for a loss, so on, so on, and I was at this big party for the election at my university.

I'm a first year, and I had been struggling with homesickness and loss and all these feelings I had no names for, but at this party I felt comfortable, I started talking with a group of girls (there were masks of both candidates, they gave me one to take home), and this is the insane story within a story -- I found someone I had taken ballet lessons with as a child all the was in the Southern US was now a student at my university in the UK as well (she had moved to Italy when we were older, so I hadn't spoken to her in years, but I checked on facebook and there she was so I said hi and we were both shocked). I wasn't drinking, but I wasn't so afraid of being alone.

At some point, because what was a very late night for us was still 'the polls are closing in ____ hours' in the US, reporters were going around, seeking Real Live Americans to interview. Another girl I had just met (she was with her English friends, but she was from New Jersey) and I were going to be on television, and the presenter got warmed up and tested the microphones and everything was going well and the camera was starting up and suddenly, I started bleeding profusely (nosebleed). Like, choking on it. And this girl sees me and asks if I'm okay and gets it and gives me a pack of tissues and says to keep them and then walks me to the bathroom and stays with me until I stop bleeding so much, even though I'm sure she had more fun things to do than stand with a blood-covered first year in a dimly-lit student union bathroom. So I think about her a lot, and how maybe the blood was a premonition.

There were also a bunch of girls who came in after, and every single girl asked me if I was okay or needed help. Girls have a way of doing that, the same thing happened when I was sobbing like a fool in the library bathroom a few weeks prior, and one of them told me 'I think we've all cried about something in the library bathroom, there's nothing better really to get over someone, don't fret' which just instantly made me smile and put me at ease.

I can't really say how much these strangers in strange places have done for me.