The Stranger Who Saved Me
I was crying on the ground when I saw him.
A man in his late twenties, riding his bike down the rain-stained pavement — where a cement bridge connected to fresh woods and the familiar mental health facilities beyond.
I thought he would ignore me.
After all, I had suddenly dropped to my knees and sobbed, in a place almost deserted in the early morning. People often did ignore me during these moods, passing me with strange looks or vacant faces.
So I did the stranger a favor. I angled my head toward the ground. Gave him the chance to pretend he had not seen the girl hunched in a lilac raincoat.
He did not take it.
I heard him jump off his bicycle and run up to me, my eyes still on the pavement. I felt him place his hand on my shoulder and say, in a voice entirely unshaken, “Tell me, what is happening here?”
Something about the calmness of his demeanor — or perhaps the anxiousness of my own — convinced me to tell him about my day.
That I had experienced a sudden, uncontrollable change in my body despite months of consistent exercise and weight loss. That although there were explanations and solutions, and nothing about the change had been my fault, I had become so overwhelmed by despair that I had felt unable to walk up that hill to work without first nursing through an anxiety attack.
Usually, when I told kind strangers about my condition, the things that made me cry that day, they did not understand — not really. Admittedly, that was never their fault.
After all, not everyone studied psychology at university. Not everyone had been to therapy for years. Not everyone knew what anxiety really was.
But he knew.
He nodded his head as I explained that this was a natural occurrence, a symptom of chronic anxiety. He provided further words of empathy when I mentioned the heaviness of my OCD disorder. And when I told him about the stress I wore like a second skin, he knew — seemed able to understand this world that very few were able to tap into.
I wondered… I wondered why he knew.
Why, when he asked me further questions, I felt so safe — even though I had only known him for a single moment. Why it felt so natural to sit there, my knees scraping wet ground, with a kind stranger’s attention on my downcast eyes.
When I asked, he smiled and explained. “I am a therapist.”
Of course. I had always felt more drawn toward people who help — or people who struggle. I wondered if maybe he was like me, drawn toward those in pain, a possible remedy wrapped in patient words and warm squeezes of the shoulder.
As he turned his head to the side, I stole a glance. He was not much older than me, with kind features, keeping so faithfully to the very occupation I was currently working to obtain.
In many ways, he was a kind of person I had always wanted to be.
And incidentally, the very person I needed in this moment.
Soon, we both raised ourselves from the ground. He wondered if I was feeling better now. There was no impatience — no hint of exasperation — in his tone, as if this was where he needed and wanted to be, helping up a person who had fallen down.
With permission from me, he gave me a friendly embrace and left me with the memory of his kindest words. That despite the pain and despair, things had a way of working out in the end.
When he departed on his bike, I still felt sad. Body still spent from crying. Heart still wanting to return home instead of going to work.
But in the few minutes we had talked, the therapist had left me with a certain something I could not have otherwise received.
By merely acknowledging me, he had made me feel seen — feel as if things really were going to be okay.
Even so, despite his position, doing this had not been his job. He had done this out of his own accord. His own kindness.
And I realized then, that it should be the aim not just for psychologists — but for people — to do so too. To show that they care. To stop upon a crying stranger and ask, “Tell me, what is happening right now?”
Eventually, I managed to carry myself to work, where I relayed the story of my encounter to a colleague. Sighing dreamily, he said, “An angel, he was. An angel, not with wings but on a set of wheels.”
In the end, this so-called “angel on two wheels” did not entirely change my day. Nor did he prevent the waves of anxiety from tracing my sleep that night.
On the contrary. By doing something small, he had made an even bigger difference.
By making sure a stranger was alright, he had changed more than her day or state of mind.
In her eyes, he had saved her life.
