Fear accompanied me throughout my childhood and youth, that’s what you get for being stupid enough to allow yourself to be born to an alcoholic father. The trauma is different to the fear experienced at the time, but still present.
Yesterday for a few minutes I experienced a different type of fear, one which, sadly, most women will encounter at some point in their lives.
I had my appointment with the researchers for the drug trial, it lasted three hours and I returned to my car around 5:30 – I had parked some distance away and had to jump on a tram (two if I’m going to be specific) to get back to my car. I alighted the tram along with a man in his 20s, I thought nothing of him, he was walking ahead of me but then he turned down the side street leading to my carpark and took a piss on a dumpster. I was suspicious of how short his piss was, it seemed like he just wanted to get behind me. So then I’m walking down a long, narrow driveway with a man behind me who I know is not above getting his dick out in public. To ensure I was being paranoid and he wasn’t really following me I moved my path from walking behind the cars to the actual painted walkway a few meters behind the cars. At the same moment so did he. At this stage I thought all I could do was to keep looking behind me so he knew I had seen his face and he wouldn’t get away with doing anything without being identified.
I’ve never imagined myself as a potential victim of sexual assault because of my appearance, but I guess it’s not really about that is it, it’s about the perpetrator expressing his power over his victim. I’ve got some fight in me, but I would have lost hands down to this man. I was ever so grateful when he turned to enter the building and I continued to the back of the car park.
By no means am I scared of men, but this felt like it could have gone very badly.
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