#9: The Runaway
September 12th, 2004.
I was on a train home from the Bronx, after watching over my best friend, who had passed out the night before and needed someone to watch over him, when a young girl got on. At the time, I was already incredibly depressed about a rough break-up I was going through and couldn’t think of anything else until I saw her. She looked completely broken, and it wasn’t until the next stop that I noticed that she had a bruise under her eye. The next stop after that, with a train nearly packed with people, she began to cry, and no one noticed.
I handed her a pack of tissues I had on me and after she thanked me, we talked. Whatever I was going through didn’t exist after asking her, “Are you ok?” She had left her boyfriend because he was beating her. Worse off, she was a runaway and had no place to stay in the city and no way back home. She called her aunt, who bought a train ticket home, paid for a hotel room, and who afterwards, thanked me for helping her and said she would ask God to bless me for what I had done for her niece. After walking her to the room, I wished her good luck and left.
I learned a few lessons from that day, but one was certainly the most important: never be afraid to lend a helping hand, even if your hand is injured.
—Photo ktus16/Flickr
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About Nick Florest
Love it Nick. For sure, wise advice. Sometimes all it takes, for me, is opening eyes to see what’s right in front of me.
“never be afraid to lend a helping hand, even if your hand is injured.”
So right.