What would you do?

Sometimes it’s just one of these days when you get up and everything goes wrong. No matter what you’re doing. You can’t crawl back to your bed or hide from people. You have to face the world around you.

Well, today’s the day for me. It’s raining heavily outside, I’ve packed everything in waterproof bags and was ready to go onto the streets with my favorite pink umbrella. (I really like colorful umbrellas, the world is grey enough when it’s raining and they give everyone a nice ‘happy’ touch! It’s sweet when they’re transparent so you’re able to see the raindrops, too. We talked about that already, didn’t we? 🙂 ) Today was gonna be a long day (it still is) and I was mentally prepared for it. My friend asked me if we wanted to meet for a coffee and who could say no to it?

We were in the middle of our chat and I saw her moving the chair so that a man in a wheelchair could pass easily to his table. Another man came behind him and I honestly haven’t noticed them because I wasn’t facing them. Suddenly, the man in the wheelchair turned to my friend and asked her if she new the singer from the cover of the newspaper he was holding in front of her face. I didn’t think anything (good nor bad), because I heard from the color of his voice that he was an older man. We all know that old people like to talk a lot, mostly because they’re feeling lonely or just have enough spare time. The other man was still sitting and I couldn’t see him well but then he turned around I saw he is completely drunk. As the first man continued to talk I noticed he was also drunk but you couldn’t notice it right away. They were asking lot of questions and I really don’t like to talk with people I feel uncomfortable with. It doesn’t matter if they’re young or old, or anything else.
It was getting more and more uncomfortable, I still haven’t said anything at all, and I stared to look around myself. Around us, there were only men, between 35 and 50 years old, some of them even put away their headphones so that they could here this awkward conversation. I formed the word “HELP” with my lips, without saying it while looking at the man sitting behind my friend. He looked at me and his eyes left mine. I did the same with the man sitting across our table. He also did nothing. I stood up, took our cups, went to the bar and asked the stuff politely if they could help us. The men haven’t ordered anything in the time while sitting there and really smelled bad. They were just looking at me like I was a fool so I took my things and said to my friend that our bus is leaving. The man in the wheelchair suddenly pulled out a bottle of some alcohol and started drinking and that’s when the waitress came and asked him to stop because alcohol isn’t allowed at that cafe. When they saw that we were leaving they said that we should wait and that they’ll go with us and that’s the moment we really run away.

Outside we looked at each other and didn’t have to ask each other how we were feeling because we read it from our faces. I can’t tell you why, but we felt exhausted, like we were working or running for miles. We didn’t do neither of it of course. In the street across our first cafe, was a nice small restaurant and we decided to drink our coffee there, hopefully in peace. We were trying to distract our thoughts from the event which took place few minutes ago, but our conversation led to it soon. I just can’t believe no one even tried to help us. Let’s be honest. I don’t expect anything from anyone but I was feeling visibly uncomfortable and was reaching out for help. It would be nice if someone said: ‘Hey, the girls were chatting, maybe they wanna be alone. What do you think?’, or anything else someone could think of. I know I’d do that. I know I’d wanna help someone. My job, one day, is going to be to rescue people and maybe it’s why I think like that. What would you do if you were me? Did I do anything wrong?

I’m not a dramatic person, nothing didn’t happen. No one was hurt in any kind of way (you never know these days). But it really made my think about it a lot. Is it so hard to stand up for someone you don’t know? What do you have to loose? How would you feel if it were you sitting there? Why are people so selfish and afraid
I’m not an introvert but, like I said, I don’t want to talk with anyone unknown or ‘weird’ to me. If being free means that we can choose who’re we talking or spending time with, I have to add I didn’t feel free or safe at all. No, I’m not gonna stop coming to that cafe with my friend but the next time I’ll be smarter. It was also my fault I didn’t say anything loudly but I can’t explain why I hadn’t done it. My mouth was sealed and word weren’t coming out of it. That’s the feeling that scared my to be honest. Maybe I’ll just need to sleep over it and it will be better.

The one thing I know is that I don’t want to feel helpless like that ever in my life. If no one pushes me, I’ll push myself.

Yours,

Smol n Big