![Kindness Makes a World of Difference](https://cdn.magzter.com/1441393360/1680702849/articles/tzMud56991680777698660/KINDNESS-MAKES-A-WORLD-OF-DIFFERENCE.jpg)
I have lived in chronic pain for most of my adult life. One thing I can tell you with absolute certainty is that the difference between living with it and giving up has almost always lived in kindness.
The first time I lost control of my bowels, I was on the platform of the Number 6 train. I was twenty-six, and a cup of coffee I’d sipped led to stomach pain I can only classify as agonizing. Though I did everything I could to get up the subway steps and into a nearby restaurant, my cold shaking body let go three steps from the top. The problem in a situation like that, I have since learned, is walking makes it worse. And stopping gets you nowhere.
I sprinted in shame to my gym, a place that had been my salvation. I rushed into the shower with all my clothes on, peeled them off, pumped bright green body soap into my jeans, and threw away my underwear in a naked dash from the scalding shower to the metal bins.
A young woman wearing a black staff T-shirt approached me in the locker room. I had seen her many times before, folding towels mostly, mopping the floor, and I always nodded my hello. She always nodded back. “Are you okay?” she asked. I was unable to speak. “Do you want me to wash and dry those for you?” she asked gently, pointing at the heap of wet clothes on the bench beside me.
I sighed, nodded my thanks and sat in tiny white towels for the next forty-five minutes while this beautiful woman did my laundry.
While the moment remains one of my most humiliating, I think it’s important to reflect on the kindness this woman showed me. She didn’t have to help. She had a lot to do, she was at work, she had a life that did not include cleaning up after me.
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