You never know who might ruin your day. While I was riding the bus today, a woman I didn't know stared at me for a long time, and then, as she was getting off, made a throat-slitting gesture at me. Even though writing this down means bringing back an unpleasant memory, I don’t want forgetting to be my only response.

This morning, as usual, I was walking from my place in North Melbourne to class at the University of Melbourne. Halfway there, it suddenly started raining, so I changed my mind and hopped on a 402 bus instead. There were quite a few people on board. I sat down in an empty seat near the back door, next to a young woman. I was listening to music and idly scrolling through my phone. 

After a while, I noticed someone standing up from a seat in front of me and moving to the aisle closer to where I was sitting. I sensed that they were staring at me. I looked up—a middle-aged white woman was staring straight at me with a pair of small eyes. She had on thick makeup, her whole face was very pale. Her lips were pressed shut, but there seemed to be a faint sneer at the corners of her mouth. Honestly, the way she looked sent a chill through me. 

When she caught my eyes, she looked away. But when I looked back down at my phone, before long I felt that same sense of being stared at again. 

I looked up and said: “What are you looking at?” 

Then I stared right back at her. I could tell her gaze was sharp, but empty—I couldn't tell what she was thinking.

My thoughts immediately turned to stories I'd seen online. I had seen so much of it before, on social media. An Asian girl on a train being called “ching chong” by a group of teenagers. A Chinese man on a bus, his face covered in blood after being attacked by a white man. A Chinese girl walking in Melbourne's CBD, slapped across the face by a woman she didn't know. A Taiwanese girl on her way to work, suddenly stabbed in the chest by a woman with a knife... As I stared straight into that woman's eyes, I realised that I might be facing something just like that.

The two of us stared at each other until the woman walked back to her seat. She made a teenager who seemed to be her daughter get up. The two of them then walked over to stand by the back door, getting ready to get off the bus. 

From time to time, that woman glanced over at me. Since I was sitting right next to the back door, I worried that the woman might try to do something to me as she got off. To avoid leaving myself in a vulnerable position, I stood up, gripped the handrail in the aisle and faced the two of them. After a moment, the woman changed her mind and decided to move to a seat at the front of the bus instead. 

As she passed by me, she demanded loudly: "Move!" I let them through. 

The woman had the teenager sit down in a front-row seat, but she herself remained standing, gripping the handrails on either side of the aisle, staring straight at me, still wearing that same chilling, almost-smile. When the bus stopped at the Royal Melbourne Hospital, she finally got off. As she did, she cursed at me using the F-word while making a throat-slitting gesture across her neck with her hand. When the bus pulled away again, I saw the woman standing bolt upright outside the hospital, still staring at the bus.

Although this incident didn't escalate into the kind of physical violence I'd seen on social media, it was enough to leave me trembling all over. It was a feeling hard to put into words. The moment I realised the woman was staring at me, my heart began to beat faster. I felt a rush of blood to my head and a slight tremor ran through my body. I was uneasy, and increasingly afraid. When I finally stood up and faced her, the fear was still there, but now it was mixed with anger. My face grew hot and my heart began to beat even faster. My whole body seemed to tense up, as if bracing for a physical confrontation.

Once I'd calmed down, I realised that I also carried a lot of shame. 

When I first noticed the woman staring at me for so long, I kept wondering “Why?”. There were so many people on the bus, so why me? Was it because I’m Chinese, or because I wear glasses? Even though I knew I hadn't done anything wrong, instead of asking what was wrong with her, I found myself searching for something in me that might explain her behaviour. Somehow, her hostility had made me turn the scrutiny back on myself, and with that came a sense of shame.

As a sociology student, my instinct was to make sense of this feeling of shame through that lens. I found that Erving Goffman's theory came remarkably close to the answer I was looking for. Goffman argued that people are constantly managing their "face" in public settings, working to maintain a presentable, normal, respectable social image. Shame, he suggests, doesn't necessarily come from having done something wrong—it often arises when this public image suddenly collapses under the gaze of others. 

At that moment, I felt ashamed, not because I believed I had done anything wrong, but because a stranger's malice had dragged me into a public spectacle I had no control over. Under the eyes of a busload of strangers, I was no longer just a student on her way to class—I had become someone caught in a confrontation. What was truly injured, perhaps, wasn't my self-esteem, but my right, as an ordinary person, to simply exist quietly in public space.

Perhaps this is also why I chose to stand up—driven by that sense of shame, I wanted to appear stronger, not just in front of that woman, but also in front of the other passengers silently watching it all unfold. I was trying to prove to the woman that she wouldn't get away with it, and at the same time, trying to prove to the other passengers that I wasn't a pushover. Looking back, though, it probably wasn't the best way to handle the situation.

After the woman and the teenager got off the bus, I found a seat and sat down. A woman wearing a hijab told me not to get upset and that the next time I encounter someone like that, it's best to just ignore them. At that point, I was still trembling. When faced with this kind of unprovoked malice, it felt as though the whole world suddenly became cold and terrifying. 

Once again, I was reminded of Goffman and his argument on how everyday life depends on a set of almost unspoken interactional rules: keeping an appropriate distance from one another, not staring at people without reason, avoiding putting others in an embarrassing position, and helping others maintain their "face". These rules are what allow strangers to share the same public space. 

When someone breaks these rules for no reason at all, what you lose isn't just a pleasant bus ride—it's your trust in the entire order of social interaction. So, I'm truly grateful for the understanding and kindness that the woman showed me in that moment. A moment when I felt most vulnerable and had begun to doubt the world around me.

I was so troubled by what had happened that I couldn't focus on any of my tutorials throughout the day as I kept replaying the scene over and over in my mind. I imagined how I could have handled it better, how I could have secretly taken a photo of the woman's face. I even began to wonder that, if it hadn't been raining, I might’ve never gotten on that bus at all. The feelings of anger, shame and disgust lingered, refusing to fade. But I know that this is exactly what these people want us to feel—that is their intent. Should I let myself be defeated by it? Of course not. 

I knew that I needed support. I told my closest classmate about it, told my white friend about it, and their comfort was the best support I could have received. I even told ChatGPT about it, and that's how I learned I could report this unpleasant experience to Victoria Police through the STOPIT system. I quickly submitted a report, and soon received a phone call from a staff member, to whom I described in detail what had happened. Although I don't know whether that woman will ever be held accountable for it, knowing that there's a system that is on my side gave me a sense of safety. Finally, I also wrote this experience down, which gave me a sense of taking control of the narrative. 

Only I can define my own life—not anyone else, and certainly not that stranger on the bus who made a throat-slitting gesture at me.