Dear Mr. Stranger who followed me home tonight from Ross Ave. , Labels: Thoughts
Hello. I am writing this to you because we had an interesting exchange this morning. Morning because it's almost 4am as I write this and I just walked into the house. Why were you out? I walked home from the club tonight because I needed some quiet and some air, but I don't know what you were out for, it didn't look like we had set out for the same reasons....but fate brought us together somehow, and I am grateful for that.
I am very used to people following me around, driving around the block more than a few times because I didn't hear them ask me to get in the car the third time and they really want to give me a ride. But for some reason, maybe because i'm hormonal and maybe because i'm me, I didn't really get defensive tonight.
Now.
Don't take that to mean that I welcomed being followed, I find it very disgusting that you'd take time out of your morning to see where i'm going as if it makes a difference. I'm just saying that it made me think. And I appreciate that as well. It's funny, usually when I realize someone is following me I speed up or change routes or any number of other things that inconvenience me but not the perpetrator, but not anymore. It occured to me a few weeks ago that I was doing things, lots of things, for other people, and while that does satisfy me in a way I cannot articulate I know that most of those people wouldn't spit on me if I were on fire, and that does not sit well with me. Once I stopped strecthing myself out so much I realized I liked the solitude that came with not being someone's chump, and frankly, our encounter was me trying that out in a larger sense....seeing how things go with a stranger when I don't bitch out and make myself look like a victim.
Having said all of that, I'm sure you were expecting a different response when I started to slow down, and when you saw what I call a pocket knife but most people would probably refer to as a bowie knife I noticed you changed your stride, yes, I will cut you open if provoked. I can take a punch, I'm a black girl who's dated black men, I can take a punch. But I'm also a weirdo who spent the better part of the last ten years feeling shitty and getting beat up in one way or another, so it could be assumed that i've got a bit of leftover aggression that I would love to show you...but I don't think you want to ride this ride, you thought you did but you don't.
I stood at the gate and watched you while you watched me, I crave intimate encounters of all kinds, but specifically the kind that involve closeness, and there is no more intimate way to hurt someone physically than to cut them open. Carving my name into your neck is the best way I know to remind you to respect a womans space and her agency, to not think that women are easy prey, to not be a perpetrator. I take violence against women very seriously, you coward, and I would have made an example of you but you didn't want me once I looked you in the eye.
You probably don't realize that you saved your own life. Again, fate.