Hardly Anyone About

On my train journey to meet a friend, I glimpse a Samaritan advert: “There is always someone who cares.” I shamefully — but intensely — think, that’s me. I ponder that I’ve seen those suicide-prevention adverts sporadically during my travels over the years and wonder: if I were in a vulnerable mental low state, could those words reach me? Would I believe they were true?

I don’t think so — which is odd, because my natural passion for helping others, my matriarchal tendencies, and my Christian upbringing that taught me to love thy neighbour have always existed alongside a deeper question: do others genuinely care too? My default is that even doctors, therapists, teachers… they’re doing their job. Surface level. And with the way the world is — workloads, personal lives, pressure — how often do we actually meet care that feels personal, not procedural?

I was walking in my neighbourhood for an evening walk. The streets were quiet. Hardly anyone about. The sun had set. Saint George’s Cross flags in windows and wrapped around wet poles from the rain earlier in the day. I held my head high in the gentle sea breeze and moonlit sky… until a loud voice chattered down the street behind me.

He was walking in the road, so I slowed down and waited for him to pass as he paced the pavement parallel to me. His hood went up.

“Oi,” he yelled at the car waiting for him to cross. “What you gonna do, ay?” Hands out wide. All bark, no bite.

I crossed the road so I could stay behind him — so he wasn’t in my blind sight.

He went on, quick as lightning — eager to find his next prey — and approached a lone figure at a bus stop up ahead. I didn’t catch the words, just the body language: loud, thrown about, taking up space. Not sticking around, he pranced off into a dark alley.

As I came up to the stop I approached the lone figure from behind, my South London cockney accent coming out without thinking:

“Are you alright?”

As she turned, I realised we both had melanin in our skin. She replied — shaken — and her accent wasn’t the same as mine.

“He told me to f*** off back to Nigeria.”

Oh dear, I thought — face still composed.

“He’s been chatting nonsense all the way up this street,” I said. “Ignore him.”

As I went on my way, she called, “Thank you.”

By the time I’d got halfway up the street, I heard a big commotion. My head spun. Across the road, at the entrance of the alley, a pale-skinned, grey-haired older man turned to look too, striking a cigarette in the dark — and we saw that same guy had returned, just as aggressive as before, this time hitting the bus stop she’d been waiting at, repeating the same words… while the woman made scarce.

I thought to myself: this man, no older than thirty, looked like he was craving a fight. Honestly, he needed a hug more than a punch — but I doubt he’d respond kindly if anyone retaliated with love and open arms. And it wasn’t my job tonight. I had a young family waiting for me at home. Still, my years working in social care made it hard not to recognise someone who needed the right support.

I just saw a bleeding soul — a grown man with an inner child crying out for help.

Why could I meet his hatred with compassion, when he’d probably never see me beneath the fog that divides us humans?

A younger me — when I hadn’t yet recognised the healer in me — would’ve put myself in harm’s way to reach that soul, knowingly or unknowingly drawn to their inner wounds; the parts of them that were traumatised, lost, wounded. I didn’t see the costume they wore. I saw the layers beneath.

And I mistook my nature — that calling to heal — for duty, for friendship, for love, for obligation.

But not every stranger I care for is my responsibility to heal. Not every person I can read is mine to reach.

Perhaps that’s why, somehow, he didn’t really see me on that same street.