Every so often my daughter will turn to me and say “You’re a really good dad,” or similar.
Gets me every time 🥹
When I was in college, online dating was getting popular and tinder had recently come out. I met one guy through the app and we texted/called/emailed for a couple of weeks. I never met him in person and for all I know it could have been a 45 year old woman I was chatting with. However, he wrote a letter to my future spouse about me and how I was kind and selfless, it was a full page letter and I still read it from time to time when I’m feeling down about myself or trying to climb out of a depressive episode. It’s one of the most genuine letters I’ve ever received and I still cherish it and cry a little when I read it, over a decade later.
I profusely thanked him at the time and tried to get back in touch and thank him years later after our conversations faded out but I never heard back.
TW: suicidal thoughts
In uni I was going through pretty bad depression, had broken off a pretty toxic relationship, getting behind on assignments more and more until it was all feeling overwhelming, I wasn’t going out of my apartment much at all and started considering ending it all, but couldn’t quite work myself up to do it.
For whatever reason i still showed up to one of my classes on project presentation day even though I had absolutely nothing to present. Professor called on me and I just said, “I can’t, nothing prepared” with no eye contact and expected that to be the end of it.
As I was walking out she made really intense eye contact and asked if everything was ok, anything I wanted to talk about? I was caught off-guard so I hesitated, then waited for everyone to leave. I think all I got out was “I’ve been feeling a little down” or something generic like that. She referred me to campus counseling and I went to a few sessions. It was enough to pull me back from the brink at least.
tl;dr Professor probably saved my life by not letting me be a faceless ghost when that’s all I felt like.
Please call 988 in the US or go to
for chat if you need someone to listen.
When I was a kid my teacher told my parents “she has something that nobody else at her age has, and that’s genuine empathy”. Now I’m an adult so it’s not an applicable compliment anymore, but I still appreciate that comment, and I’d like to think it was true.
“God you smell good.”
- said by a lady working behind gas station check out.
Yeah, I muttered “thanks” and left. Still stuck with me, though,
Giggity…
