Allow me to start from the beginning...
Recently I have taken a liking to the cob salad at Safeway. It's just so yummy. About an hour before I was due at ARC for our final night of staff training, I decided I could go for a cob salad for dinner because I didn't have time to go home first. So I went to Safeway, got my salad, and decided it was too crowded in the little cafe there to stay. So I went to my car. I pushed back the seat, pulled out a good book, and was just starting to enjoy my salad when...I noticed two men in my rearview mirror signalling to me. I think one even tapped on my back window. That is when I heard it.
The unmistakeable sound of someone in trouble. A woman in trouble. Big trouble. I dashed out of my car and followed the cowardly pointing of the two men who had beckoned me from my dinner...I saw a girl, no older than 20, walking towards us in hysterics.
Soaking wet.
Buck naked.
No joke.
My first thought as I made a mad dash toward her and my novel fell to the ground was that she had been raped. She was inconsolable. Fell into my arms and cried like a newborn baby. And between the sobs I began to make out some sentences...
"...wasn't my fault..."
"...she's gonna kill me..."
"...had sex with him..."
"...nobody loves me..."
"...I'm gonna die..."
"...I want to die..."
This was all taking place as she clung to me, and as one unit we slowly made our way to my car. I opened the trunk, found an old blanket and covered her up as I finally made eye contact with another witness and asked him to call 911.
I don't think she knew she was naked. Or soaked.
That girl finally allowed me to pry her off for just a second so I could get a look at her face. I wanted to look into her eyes. I wanted to know who she was. She looked at me, too, and for just a second, the crying ceased. There was a moment of peace that passed through her. I saw it. I saw it with my own eyes.
That moment was interrupted by a figure approaching us. It was a woman. A woman who scared Crying Girl big time. A woman I would have avoided had I crossed paths with her in any other situation. And yet here she was, boldly approaching, clearly angry.
I thought for sure this was it; we were both gonna be beaten.
Instead she just started yelling at the girl, at which point I learned the girl's name. And the girl, in turn, started that sobbing, choking, newborn crying again. It was a hard call for me: get involved and stick up for this girl, or protect her silently, with my body, and stay out of it. I guess I did a bit of both. Enough to find out that Scary Lady was Crying Girl's off-duty caretaker. Caretaker for what, exactly, I have no idea. In any case, they knew that Crying Girl was out there buck naked and soaked, although Scary Lady didn't exactly know why. And she wasn't being very rational or nice or calm either. She kept threatening her, saying if she didn't quit it she would end up back in the hospital. The hardest part for me was that she kept trying to take the girl away from me, but the girl was determined not to let me go. I didn't mind that; I wasn't planning on letting her go either.
So where, you might ask, are the police? It's now been somewhere between 15 minutes and 10, 000 hours, and we are still here, just the three of us, save for awkward passerby's who never once offered help or even eye contact. I began to feel very alone.
Scary Lady made one last attempt to get Crying Girl off of me: She threatened to call the police. I had to tell her, as much as I didn't want to, that the police had, in fact, been called and were hopefully (had better be!) on their way. Interestingly enough, this was all it took to see Scary Lady take off for the wilderness. Apparently she didn't want to have anything to do with the cops and was only using them as a threat.
It was just the two of us. Once again.
Out of the complete and utter blue came the moment that perhaps confused me the most. Crying Girl asked if she could kiss me. Kiss me. I said she could kiss me on the hand, which she did. Only a few moments later she decided that wasn't good enough and kissed me on the cheek. Before I had the chance to ask her why she had done that, she said, between tears, "God told me to kiss you. He wanted me to do that."
Okaaaaaayyy...
Just as I was starting to feel really, really angry at the police station or the 911 people or whoever was supposed to be showing up, this really big (and altogether quite gorgeous) cop appeared. I felt really guilty for feeling so attracted to him given the current situation, that a very unstable, naked girl was practically sitting on my lap in the trunk of my car. But what can you do? Anyways, turns out they knew each other. Not in a good way. I know all of zero details. But the girl did get up to "hug" him, dropping the blanket and further worsening the situation.
Incredulously, the officer just shook my hand, thanked me, and told me to go. No report or anything. The girl clung for just a final second, told me she loves me (?) and that was that.
I didn't want to go to staff training in the first place, and I especially didn't want to go after that. I wanted to talk to someone. I wanted to debrief. I wished so much that someone else had been present to witness that. But none of those things happened, really. So I zoned in and out all evening long, sometimes actively participating in conversations and sometimes just finding myself back in that place of confusion and shock. It happened so fast and yet it changed me, somehow.
Now that a few hours have gone by, some things have come up in my mind...
One thing I purposely neglected to mention earlier was that one lady did actually stop and talk to us. I'd say she was in her 60's, just innocently heading to Safeway to buy some groceries. Crying Girl scared her, I think, or in any case startled her. She asked the lady, not quietly I might add, to pray for her. She wanted someone to pray for her. She asked the lady if she was a Christian and the lady said yes. So Crying Girl said, "Good, then can you please pray for me now?" It was most definitely the only clear, concise, intelligible sentence I heard her say the whole time. The only one. I am sorry to tell you that the lady said no, clutched her purse even tighter and hurried off, leaving me with an even sadder Crying Girl. So I prayed for her, but I think in her mind it was too late. In her mind that lady had kind of stolen something from her, some hidden hope I guess. It was the only time I felt helpless throughout this whole fiasco.
I wish the Christian lady had just prayed for her. I think it's what Jesus would have done. I am not saying she didn't have her reasons to be scared and want to leave quickly, but it still makes me really sad. That's just my opinion.
If you go back to the top of this post, I said something that might not make sense to you, now that you have read through the story that took place in the Safeway parking lot. I said that what happened today gave me great inner peace. That's true. It did.
When I was in Africa holding those sick babies as they grew even sicker, people would email me and ask me how I did it, how I held up under such circumstances. I think sometimes people hear my soft baby voice or see me crying or something and just assume that I am hypersensitive or weak. I'll never claim to be one of great strength, but I do have to say that I personally feel my best quality is thick skin and a soft heart. It has served me well my whole life. It takes a lot to take me down when it comes to the real stuff in life, and yet I do feel empathetic enough to want to reach out.
It's what has led me to where I am today, fascinated with sociology and social work and psychology. I am desperate to learn more about the human condition and to learn more about how we all fit into this world. I know that I won't ever be able to wrap my mind around it. What happened today only drives this longing deeper, this passion to want to be a part of these things that happen. What happened today has left me with endless unanswered questions about Crying Girl.
A big question I have is this: How in the world did Naked Crying Girl get from Point A to Point B without someone stopping to help her? There aren't exactly a lot of houses around that area. She had to have crossed a busy street. She had to have passed by someone. And yet she made it all the way to the middle of the parking lot. How many people in Abbotsford tonight saw her and have told the story to their friends and families about the crazy girl they saw? But why did no one help her? Why?
I want to know why. I want to learn about this. I want to learn about this thing called life.
And also, I want to do this. I want to hold soaking wet people. I want to spend the rest of my life loving the unloveable.
The strangest thing about this is that never once did I feel fearful. I only felt at peace, like this is who I am supposed to be. And I swear, if there was a camera trained on me during that time, you would have seen a faint smile on my lips. Because I felt this deep joy. I felt like I was exactly where I was supposed to be at exactly the right time.
Crying Girl, you've taught me so much. Sleep well tonight, dear girl. Don't catch cold.
~C~
PS When I arranged the song for this post, I really wanted to play you Unloved by Jann Arden, but it was unavailable. Instead I chose Hold On...it pretty much speaks for itself.
PPS I guess I lied. I told you that you wouldn't hear from me till I was 26, but when you gotta write, you gotta write. Thanks so much for listening.
PPPS There is a part of me that feels I somehow crossed some unseen line by sharing this so openly. If you know Crying Girl, or think you might, then please respect her. This blog is only meant to shed light on the human condition...
