Doin' the Right Thing

Today you're at work.
It's near the end of the day, the time of day when you start taking bathroom breaks to hide, and you have found, in your travels, the upstairs bathroom to be the cleanest and least occupied of your options.

You know, since the employee prison toilet has been out of order since November.

So, as is your adapted habit, you walk upstairs, hide in a bathroom stall to plot your way out of another hour and a half of customer contact,
and then "she" comes in.

"She" is, judging by the backpack that is unceremoniously dumped on the tile floor, a student, and has received some devastating news. You can hear the gasping sobs that she keeps trying (very unsuccessfully) to muffle, and now you fear that you are trapped.
Leaving the stall (you do not yet realized she is now in her own stall) means interaction.
Maybe accidental eye contact. Maybe she will be one of those people who needs to confide in a stranger in a public bathroom. You really hope she is not.

Eventually, you realize after several people have come and gone that this is getting weird.
You have to leave the stall, and since the sobs have subsided into sniffles and tiny strangled sounding hiccups, you decide you can probably exit without getting drawn in.

And you feel guilty about this.

Wait. What? How did you get the notion that this was your responsibility?
You have heard one too many scripted speeches. You've read too many Facebook posts and Guidepost articles and inspirational memes. You expect a lot of you. You are there "for a reason" and you are going to have the words that this person needs to hear right now.
No pressure.

Except it isn't like that.

You start to think of your most recent nervous breakdown and realize that not only were you not in the mood to be bothered, but that that would have been awkward as hell.

When you're truly upset
-sobbing in a public bathroom kind of upset-
you don't want to hear another human voice.
You don't want to have to explain what is going on with your emotions while your head is still processing them.
You want to be left alone.

So you screw up the courage and open that stall door, grateful to find that the feet attached to this devastated shell of a human are behind another stall door.
You think about it again, asking "What's wrong?" and then catching yourself when you realize
you have nothing to give.
You don't know what the situation is.
You don't have a script writer.
You have the potential to make things
EXPONENTIALLY WORSE.

So you wash your hands, wave your hand in front of the towel dispenser like you're Obi Wan Kenobi using the Jedi mind trick (you WILL dispense a towel) because sometimes you do that, and then you dry your hands and walk out the door,

because sometimes the best thing you can do for someone is
nothing at all.