Make Someone Feel Good

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So, there is someone that I volunteer with quite frequently. She always makes me feel intimidated because of her personality: she talks about clothes, exercising, beaches, hanging out, etc. etc., etc., and those aren't my highest priorities, so I'm usually...'silent' when she speaks. But I've known her for about 4 years now, and have gotten to know her better in the past year and a half.

I view her as very dear because of the time we've spent with each other, but it's impossible for me to express it to her verbally. She tolerates my randomness, my cheesiness, my awkwardness, my strange vocabulary, and she even indulges in them at times. However, she has run into a problem for months that I only became aware of recently, and when I realized how bad it was, I became so unbelievably anxious with worry for her that it made me stim for a couple of hours at one point. I thought to myself, "How did I not see this? What is wrong with me? How is she feeling? Is she okay?"

So I spent the duration of the night making her a card -- scrapbooking tools, mini painting, etc -- and wrote her a small letter within. I apologized to her that I was so oblivious to her issue, but also let her know that I respected the boundaries that people set with those outside of their social circle. In other words, I understand that I'm not in her inner circle, so if she doesn't want to tell me directly about the problem she is facing, I'm not offended at all. However, my main point to her was that -- after realizing what she was dealing with -- I was encouraged by the amount of finesse that she'd had while dealing with her issue up until this point, and I wanted her to keep enduring as much as she possibly could.

It's nearly impossible for me to express these kinds of things verbally to people. I become incredibly uncomfortable, and I can not get my words out effectively. However, I always find that writing gives me the precision that I can't otherwise convey. So after I gave her the letter the next evening [after having spent the whole day with her], I pined over how cheesy she must find it. All night, I thought, "She's going to laugh at it. I can't even look at her tomorrow. She's going to think I'm childish. She won't talk to me. Worry. Worry. Worry."

The next morning when I saw her, I tried to bypass her with a quick hello, but she managed to find me a couple of minutes later. I could barely look at her, but she said to me, "Ah...I just wanted to, ah...say Thank You. It was beautiful. We'll talk."

That made my day.

I hope that we each can find our own unique ways to bolster up people around us, no matter how much we might feel that our methods are ineffective or strange. That personal touch that we have is sometimes the thing they need the most at that moment.