Deep Thoughts: What If I Made It Worse?

One time when we were living in Virginia, I bought a stranger a bus ticket. I don’t know what possessed me, and to this day I wonder if I actually helped that person? You’re supposed to wonder about the small things other people do for you that you can never pay back. But what if instead we wonder about the things we do for other people that we never hear about again?

That’s what I think about.

How did it happen? I don’t remember much. I remember driving on the road, and spotting a person. I think my kids were with me, because I have a memory of one of them asking me what I was doing afterwards, so they had to have been there to witness my madness.

I remember taking this person – it was a man. I don’t remember what he even looks like – just that he seemed lost and not that old. And I believed him when he said he was just panhandling for money to buy a bus ticket. And all I remember saying was what if I bought you the ticket instead? Like instead of giving him the money taking him to the bus station and purchasing his ticket for him and then leaving him to it.

And that’s what I did. I think I gave him a ride. A wildly dangerous thing for a woman alone with her children to do in retrospect, but I was knee deep in my Christian era, so I was trusting that everything was going to work out.

The guy had a bag with him. Probably everything he owned. I don’t even know what was really going on with him. I didn’t ask. Or maybe I did and I just don’t remember. I don’t think I’ve told too many people about this, and I doubt my sons remember. I should probably ask them…

But in the end, I remember I mentioned it to my friend at the time, and all I remember was that her reaction was not good. I think she was like, oh my god that was dangerous, or something like that. Instead of being like I did a good thing.

And I have wondered about that. What if they didn’t need to get on a bus and go anywhere? What if I made that person’s situation worse because I thought I was being benevolent? What if I should have just given them the little cash I had? Because I don’t think I even had much more than what I used to buy their ticket, but it felt like the right thing to do at the time.

I can’t say I regret it because I have nothing to compare it to. But I have wondered. The situation creeps into my mind every now and again when I am questioning my life choices. Wondering if there were ever to be a situation where a stranger would do something for me. Because it always seems to me that I am the stranger doing things for other people every time. Very rarely am I the recipient of anyone else’s benevolence.

Once again, the algorithm has provided me with the self-identification loop. I am shown content to explain the “trauma responses” triggered by my life as the “traumatized eldest daughter”. I get posts telling me why I am incapable of asking for help, why I am independent without a cause. The posts describe me with an uncanny accuracy.

And I feel seen.

Here’s why I do these things, here’s the why’s of what I am feeling. I see a lot of these posts, and many resonate and sound and feel like me. But that’s it. Now what?

It’s all about how to identify it, but nothing of how to make it better. Which is starting to make me think it won’t get better, or worse, it can’t get better.

Sigh.

So here I am. Writing into the void and hoping that I’ll work out a solution to my own problems and existential angst on my own, like I do everything else.