[02] Seething for safety
Not all my writing is morose or melancholic. Yet here we are.
Hello again.
I write bearing a gift from Society. A gift from Men. That collective whom I cannot trust or trash or thrash (I've got wet noodles for arms).
Seething
I witnessed a robbery this morning. The sun lit up the mountain and also managed to show me a tall man in a high-vis vest running away from a pastel blue car he had broken into. The owner was distraught. I don't know what he stole from the car, but he definitely stole my peace of mind. It wasn't even 9am yet.
Safety?
The concept of "he" always steals my peace of mind. There are precious few men whom I trust. I can count them on one hand. The one I trust above all others is the one I've given my hand to.
Otherwise, I don't trust that little boys are socialised to be peaceful and polite when things don't go their way. As a little girl, I always saw them turn into table-flipping quitters over the smallest things. As a woman, I don't see that as having changed other than the tantrums getting louder and their bodies becoming their weapon against perceived slights.
Tired
Since I turned 9, I've had a tenseness. It grew like mold and hardened into an automatic response whenever I saw a man. Nothing terrible happened to me, but I saw and heard terrible things happen to other women. How can a little girl promise herself not to be in harm's way when the whole world is littered with it? How can I get over men in the street leering at me as I walked home in my school uniform (clearly, they'd never seen knobbly knees before)? What kind of a life do I offer the little girl within whose distrust of men is so debilitating? What is 'peace of mind' as a girl? Brown or not.
I haven't walked outside by myself since 2019. And every time I did, I got catcalled openly or approached slyly (despite my Outside Face, set in a deliberate scowl until I reached my destination). It's fucking exhausting to turn a blind eye and a deaf ear, only to smile at the male dentist or male jeweller or male grocer or male friend and pretend like my personhood wasn't encroached on just 30 seconds before by someone who looked like them.
Now
I carried on with my day and focused on work.
Tomorrow, when I go outside — if I go outside alone — I will be just like I always am. Reserved, clipped, scowling at the world, and so aware of the unfamiliar men that I will forget their humanity — and by extension, my own...