TL;DR: Found lost/sad girl, fought approach anxiety, saved the day

So I decided to go out alone on a Friday night. I don't live in the city, so I took a train in and proceeded to walk around town. Now, since I have social anxiety or whatever I didn't go to a club straight away, although that was the plan.

As I'm walking down the street, what do I see? A girl in only her top, no jacket, with her arms wrapped around her, visibly upset heading in the opposite direction. A decent person would've stopped her and asked her if she was OK, and some group of guys made some half-hearted attempt before shuffling on. Me? No, I have approach anxiety so I let her pass me. But then it occurred to me: I can't leave this girl to her fate. She has no jacket, it's pretty damn cold and maybe she got attacked or something? Time to orchestrate a run-in! I turned around and noted what street she went down and then dived down the next parallel one. I have long legs, and she doesn't so I knew I could out-pace her, turn the corner and end up on her street - which is exactly what happened.

I basically run down the parallel street, take the first right turn to get to hers, I turn to the right and sure enough, in the distance she's walking towards me, arms folded and head lowered. I think: "well.. here goes"

I approach, "Hey, are you OK?"

As soon as she stops I take a step back, fold my hands behind my back and lean against a wall - I want to appear as non-threatening as possible.

I can barely make out words between her sobs, she tells me she's fine, obviously she's not. I give her my jacket and keep by button down and sweater on.

I ask her where her jacket is, where her friends are but I don't get a coherent response and I can tell it's not something she wants to talk about for whatever reason

I get her to sit down with me to just breathe and calm down which she does. She doesn't appear to be drunk, mostly just upset

I do end up finding out where she lives and I tell her I'm putting her on a train back home which she seems to agree to - so she takes my arm and I walk her to the train station

Now - said train leaves at 3:00 in the morning, it was currently ~1:00

We sit down on a bench inside, I tell her to rest her head against me if she wants, and she does. I put my arm around her and she actually falls asleep. I sit in stillness - this becomes easier to do for prolonged periods of time as you get used to meditating.

I get some people looking over as they pass, I don't care

Eventually a girl walks past and looks for a good 9 seconds, doing some Impressive craning of her head as she walks and stares at the girl resting on my chest.

15 minutes later three people approach, apparently her friends have been looking for her for 2h and craning-head-girl recognized the girl and tipped them off.

Sad girl gets a big hug and kiss on the cheek from her female friend and for the first time in 2h i see her genuinely smile and laugh - it was actually heartwarming

After making sure she was taken care of, off I went into the night

I take two lessons from this experience:

  1. A personal one: my approach anxiety is such bullshit fake news, I'm not actually scared - I can approach and talk to people if I want to it seems. it's more of an inertia than an approach anxiety. You know, if you're tucked into your warm bed and your alarm rings and you have to get up - how do you do it? You take one step and then the next. And (!) Maybe if I'd didn't get over my own bullshit in that moment and help her, maybe then she would have actually gotten into trouble

  2. Pickup is about going out and sharing good energy and experiences with your fellow humans. She seemed like a very sweet girl and I'd do it over again. Go get results that you want of course, also don't forget that we're all in it together.

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Cpt. Save-a-hoe, 432nd White Knight Divison, over and out