It always helps to ask 

Okay so this is another life story of my ADVENTURE ON THE LONDON UNDERGROUND this morning. Everyday is an adventure hurhur. 

Well anyway, this time I was at Bank station, approaching the Northen Line platform to High Barnet which is ALWAYS super crowded in the morning. So I’m standing around, waiting for my train amongst the crowd, head in a book and earphones in my ear and I look over as this girl steps toward the platform edge just a couple of meters away from me. I noticed her face was red, she’d obviously been crying and still was. 

To my amazement, no one stopped to ask what’s wrong, because of course it’s a wednesday morning and everyones far too busy trying to get to work. I walked up to her, took my headphones out and lowered my book and asked a simple question, 

“Are you okay?” 

She shook her head and just said “No I’m not.” 

I then asked why and she replied, “My dad died.” 

People were giving me odd looks as I stood with this girl and started talking, and apparently she came to the track to jump off. Whether she’d do it or not, was another thing, she just seemed so scared. 

Now I’m not a touchy feely person, in fact I HATE touching other people but I put my arm around her and said, “Do you want to talk about it?” 

She looked at me, pretty shocked I guess, a stranger asking her if she wanted to talk. 

I explained how my dad passed away too and she asked me a couple of questions how I coped with it and didn’t I feel like I wanted to do the same, of course I did, I mean I was REALLY close to my dad, but I talked it through with her. Got her number down, and walked her home. Yeah I was late for work, I texted my boss telling him and he said not to worry but her house wasn’t too far from the station either. I had a small talk with her mum who surprisingly hugged me. It was all really surreal to me, ya know? 

So the girl, who was like 16, just said to me “If you didn’t ask me if I was okay, I think I would’ve jumped.” 

I think that’s one of the most tragic things that I’ve heard and I was really upset after she told me, so I’m just going to continue texting her all day to tell her that shes not alone, yes. 

Moral of this, it doesn’t hurt to ask if someone is okay if you see that they’re clearly not.