Boo Who?

So yesterday was pretty rough for me, and I went to bed crying and all upset about life and thinking about how I should just stop caring about people because it only brings me hurt. I care so much about people, just as a general rule, and when bad things happen to people I love, it makes me hurt so much. And the worst is, when I can't cheer people up or make them happy, I take it personally. My mom is an unhappy person, and I feel like I can't make her happy ever since she says she never has and never will be happy, and it makes me feel horrible. Same with my ex boyfriend who was depressed.

I was just about to make the vow to not care about people anymore (unlikely it would have worked anyway, but in my tear-filled and emotional state, I was going to vow to never care about anyone ever again, dammit!), when I looked across the room and caught a glimpse of this:

Several years ago, maybe when I was 16 or something, I was in the library by my house, and I was standing in line at the desk to ask a question of one of the librarians. This woman, she looked to be down on her luck at the very least, possibly homeless as she was carrying a huge backpack, she needed to print something but she was missing a dime. She looked pretty distressed and upset about it, and the librarians just wouldn't let her print the damn whatever it was, so I got out my wallet, dug around and gave her a dime. That woman's face changed from distraught to overjoyed in about half a second. After a lot of thank-yous and god-bless-yous, she walked away and I faced the desk again. A few seconds later, she comes back up to me, catches my attention again, reaches into the side pocket of her backpack (like one of those places you're supposed to put a water bottle in) and pulls out that little owl and hands it to me. I told her no, I couldn't take that, but she pressed it into my hand and said one thing: "Just promise me you'll look at it, like when you're sad, and always think of something happy." 

I will NEVER forget that woman, and how the one small kindness I showed her out of sheer care for humanity seemed to really have just made her whole damn day. And I still have the owl, obviously, after all these years. And every time I look at it, I think of her, and it makes me smile, and it reminds me that people ARE worth caring about. Because even though you can get hurt, simply caring enough to spare a dime, or even a smile, to someone can mean the world, and making someone happy makes my heart fill up with so much love and happiness. All the hurt in the world couldn't take that away.