What To Do About Fear
TW: rape, sexual assault. Paragraphs two and three are graphic.
I have this thought when walking down a dark hallway that there may be a man in the shadows who will pull me aside and have his way with my body. I have this thought in my house at night, and when walking into a bathroom and being too late to turn on the light, and at the end of the day when entering my room - when I check in the closet and (if I feel up to it) under the bed for predators.
It is easy to state that this fear is due to one man, in his 20s, in a car of nondescript color, with a face too blurred from alcohol to recall, pushing his dick into my throat while his fingernails ripped into the skin of my ass. Blood is a fascinating lubricant. I think of it often. Is a dick not like a knife that slices into skin? I dream of it, of men with daggers for appendages, tearing and chewing endlessly.
There are many more dreams. In one, there existed an apartment connected to our balcony by a gate, from which the men in my life entered and raped me. In another, I was paralyzed on a hospital cot screaming soundlessly while a man with pixelated, censored lips kissed and fucked me. In yet another, I was sold for 200 British pounds (though I'm American? - my subconscious would not elaborate) as a part of a sex trafficking ring. I still remember the icky warmth of it all.
I do not have a diagnosis (because I have not seen a therapist, in part because I have at present no solidly reliable means, and in part because I find it hard to imagine myself apart from this), but I suspect this could be termed PTSD.
It is easy to believe that this trauma is the result of a singular event. That I was normal, then I was raped, and now I'm weird and traumatized. Given the propensity of rape survivors to express hypersexuality, I find it conveniently easy to explain my own hypersexuality that way. I was normal, then I was raped, and now I'm hypersexual.
Sexual violence does not exist in a vacuum. As a society, we glorify it.
Men pick up women at bars by lying to them. Coercion is feigned as receiving consent. As a country, we have elected by public majority a rapist and a pedophile. There is no way around it. As a country, we systematically protect rapists and pedophiles from harm. We develop systems to watch people - the marginalized - at every moment. We outsource personal connection to chatbots. We sell the concept of eroticism. We are giddy with it. The social networks we constantly re-construct hide the bruises, hide the coercion, hide the giddiness at soulless, erotic, violent voyeurism. The rapist is the one who makes the machine. He glorifies conquest. We glorify conquest. We glorify peeping at the unsuspecting, sweeter other. Our world loves the erotic. It does not love pleasure, or intimacy, or connection, but only the erotic consumption of its own marginalized factors. It is self-consuming. This world is designed to consume you.
In the aftermath of being raped, I sobered up on a toilet seat and cleaned off the blood as best I could. When I spoke to a survivorship counselor, I was told I was "well adjusted" and given a couple worksheets on handling nightmares.
Fear
I have this thought when walking down a dark hallway that there may be a man in the shadows who will pull me aside and have his way with my body. The dark reminds me of the street, reminds me of consumption. As do cars, when I'm alone with men. As does alcohol, conceptually, though partaking in it is strangely liberating.
I am afraid of consumption. What can be done about it?
If a fearless person were to walk (theoretically) alone in the dark, how do they avoid fear?
There are, as I've reasoned, three options:
First, the fear may be challenged on the basis of knowledge. If our character were to know, without a doubt, that there were no predators in the dark, then they would not be afraid.
Second, the fear may be challenged on the basis of ability. If our character were to know, without a doubt, that they were capable of resisting any potential predator in the dark, then they would not be afraid.
Third, the fear may be challenged on the basis of effect. If our character were to know, without a doubt, that they would survive and be unharmed from their own consumption, then they would have nothing to be afraid of.
I find myself increasingly reliant on the first of these options. For instance, my closet door swings outward, into my room. When I leave my room, I can leave a small box just outside the door. If an intruder were to sneak into my room and hide in the closet, waiting to rape me, I would be able to tell immediately upon entering my room by the position of the box (as there is no way to enter the closet, close it, and from within reposition the box).
When the first method is insufficient, I tend toward the third. Men will be rapists and voyeurs no matter what you wear or how you act. If I wish to move through the (metaphorical) dark at all, and without a perfect perception of the ever-present threats surrounding me, I simply resign myself to my fate. Before entering the bathroom to brush my teeth each night I say to myself, c'est la vie. Perhaps it will happen today, perhaps not. I do not have perfect control over my space. If I disassociate well enough, it is not an issue at all. There are things you must do to live, like be able to walk into dark rooms and turn on lights, or move in public without escort. When threats are unclear, and I have only the barest of means of self-defense (pepper spray, the sharp edge of my keys, fingernails, the hefty wood of my skateboard) at some point you must resign.
I feel afraid, often. I feel afraid as I sit in my room at 11pm writing this. I did not check under the bed. I did not check outside the window, though I do not want to. I have not double-checked the window locks, but the thought of opening the curtains terrifies me.
And so, resignation. C'est la vie. If I am raped tonight in this bed, it happens. And so it goes.
Edits!
If this makes you uncomfortable that's ok! If this makes you sad also, or upset. Even angry, though I often feel strange about others being angry on my behalf, as a response to my fundamental life experiences. What I am not okay with is pity. You should know that I can take care of myself, that despite my fears I continue to walk into dark rooms and get into Ubers and meet new people. I'm okay, don't pity me.
Edit 2: It's also important to note that my three options I listed are on the basis of perception, not actual knowledge. I think the majority of people go through the world with a low perception of threats (ie. fearless by #1). The root of the paranoia is the atypically high assumption of threats, requiring verification and other strategies.