What it’s like being a girl
Yesterday I was talking to my Mom, and she told me (“not to scare you, hon!”) that there is a serial rapist active in a neighborhood not too far from mine; shinnying up drainpipes and entering open second-floor windows to attack the women inside. He does this between 3-5 a.m. and apparently has been stalking the women, as he raped one half an hour after her husband left for work. I had to go and read all about it in the paper, and there’s not much that they know apparently, but they thought the public should be warned.
Now, let me tell you what it’s like to be a girl. Last night I was afraid to go to bed. I stayed up until 2 am just fooling around on the computer, and when I did finally go to bed I couldn’t sleep. I kept jerking awake at any noise, and I felt like sleeping with my phone in my hand.
See, a few years ago, on March 16th to be exact, I had a girl’s night out at one of my friends’ houses. We did girly stuff, watched movies, ate, painted our nails. We left around 12:30 I think. My friend and I, who had driven together, got back to my house around 1 am. I went inside and went to bed. My friend went home and sent some emails, then went to bed herself. Around 2:30, she woke up with a?rapist in her bed. He tied her up, terrorized her for hours, robbed her, and left. The next morning, a phone call from another friend woke me up with the news.
I went over to this girl’s apartment, and someone who was whole and healthy and happy less than 10 hours before had since been through an ordeal I can’t imagine, and was changed forever. I realized then that not only could it easily have been me, but that no one was safe. There isn’t any safe place in the world, there’s not anything you can do to be careful enough or strong enough or prepared enough to stop someone from doing violence to you if they are determined to. My friend had PTSD, and because she’d never seen her attacker’s face (he had her tied up face-down on the bed the entire time) she couldn’t be around?groups of men. He could have been standing right there, and she wouldn’t have known him.
I stayed as long as she needed me that morning, and then I came home and called my landlord to change the type of locks that I had, the same kind her rapist had easily circumvented. I went out and bought an alarm system. You see the thing that scared me the most was that she hadn’t even heard him come in. A neighbor heard glass breaking (my friend’s front door) but didn’t even get up to investigate. When I checked my email I received some forwarded jokes she sent me about an hour before the attack. It was like getting a message from the dead. That girl, the one that sent that message, had no idea what was going to happen to her by the time it was received. I wanted to scream backward in time to warn her.
That night I did sleep with the phone in my hand, my bedroom door closed and locked, and I woke up from nightmares several times, panicked and ready to call 911. Everything about my life and the way I understood the world changed. Everyone was threatening, every situation was loaded with potential danger. It’s not really that the world changed, it’s just that now I understood.
Now I sleep with my windows closed and locked, alarms armed, and I have a dog who barks at every noise she hears in the night. And I don’t mind that. If someone’s?breaking in here, I want to hear them coming. I sleep with my regular phone close by, and my cell phone close by too.
And last night I hardly slept at all.
I don’t think that men can ever understand what it’s like to be a girl, when it comes to personal safety. When you yell shit at me on the street, or pull your car up next to me and try to talk, I’m afraid. When you walk up to me on the street and ask directions, I am afraid. When I am alone in a parking garage and you’re behind me, I am afraid. When I have to walk by a group of guys standing around uselessly on a corner, and they say shit under their breath to me, I am not just pissed off, I am afraid. With good reason – not paranoia. Even being way too careful isn’t possibly careful enough. Women all have to balance our safety with our right to live our lives with some sort of freedom. I love living alone. I don’t want to live with someone else. When I was little I used to think I could never live alone because of?closet monsters. Who’d tuck me in and keep me safe if I lived alone? And even though I get scared now of things other than closet monsters, I do live alone.
I take all?the precautions that I can, and it helps that my 6’5″ 300 lb best guy friend lives next door to me. He never worries about anything. He will go to the seediest neighborhood in the middle of the night with his convertible top down. He walks through the park after dark. He laughs at my fears. (he’s my friend, yeah, but he’s still a guy – sensitivity chip is permanently on the fritz) I don’t even like to take my dog out after dark. I don’t think he ever wakes up with the phone in his hand, not knowing how it got there.
I don’t even know why I had to type all this rambling, disjointed mess up tonight. I guess because I get pissed off. I don’t get why men don’t get it. Hell, I don’t understand why some women don’t get it.
Anyway, that’s what it’s like being a girl. Congratulate yourself on your dick, if you’ve got one. It has benefits you’ve probably never even considered.
Filed under: personal ramblings | Comments (6)6 Responses to “What it’s like being a girl”
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Well, nothing even APPROACHING that, I’m sure, but I have a vague understanding of that kind of fear. When I was six years old, my house was the target of a drive-by shooting. No one in my family was harmed, but that didn’t really mean much to the frightened kid huddled behind the couch for fear they’d make a second pass. I have no idea what my level of bravery was before that, but I know that after that, I was one fearful kid. I wanted my parents to brick up my window. I’d run screaming out of the room when a pull-blind would snap up. I conjured every horrible fate imaginable when I should have been trying to sleep…and I still do. Obviously, nothing can compare to the physical and mental violation that is sexual assault…but I often wonder how much different, how much BETTER my life would have been if a couple of jerks who worked with my dad hadn’t decided it would be funny to shoot up my house.
Posted 5/29/2006 11:47 PM by Slovman – reply
My friend has a son who’s petrified that someone is going to break into their house and kill them, probably because he accidentally saw the news once. *eyeroll*
Posted 5/30/2006 11:10 AM by superbadG – reply
I guess I’ve been through a lot. Having a sexual abuse issue with a neighbor when I was young and having had several health issues that almost killed me. The weird thing is eventually you just become so glad and appreciative to still be alive that you become unafraid of anything.
Posted 5/30/2006 12:06 PM by micalclark – reply
Posted 5/30/2006 6:26 PM by superbadG – reply
Well, to be honest, my dad’s an asshole, so probably the former.
Posted 5/30/2006 6:42 PM by Slovman – reply
That’s so short story material, or at least a great list for McSweeney’s :
“Attempts made on my father’s life due to him being an assclown: 1988-2006″
Posted 5/30/2006 6:57 PM by superbadG – reply