just alisha things

This isn’t the blog topic I had in mind when I decided that I would sit down and write today. I wanted to write something upbeat and cheery, maybe provide a feel good read or a pick-me-up for anyone that needs it. I wanted to write about how to stay positive in what is hopefully the last leg of this impossible journey living in a pandemic. Something to lift me up as I write, and something to lift you up as you read. But that’s not how I’m feeling today. I’m not feeling positive or cheery or upbeat. I’m angry, I’m sad and I’m incredibly frustrated.

One of the first things I did this morning was open BBC News to see if there was any update in the case of Sarah Everard. I opened my social media apps, as I do every day, to see a storm taking place in the wake of Sarah’s disappearance. #NotAllMen is trending, and fragile ego’s are crying about they feel attacked that women are painting them all with the same brush. The Daily Mail wrote an article about the case, and had five detailed paragraphs on Wayne Couzen’s “family values” and “good nature”, but one sentence on why his name is even in the media at all? One sentence on Sarah’s disappearance, versus five paragraphs detailing his sob story. Women are angry and tired, because Sarah is a stark reminder that we are not safe. We’re not safe when we wear bright clothing. We’re not safe when we wear trainers so we can run if necessary. We’re not safe if we phone our friends or partners or family when we’re walking home in the dark. We can stick to well lit roads and leave our headphones in our pockets and jingle our keys in our clammy hands, but we are not safe. We collectively mourn for every woman lost this way, but I think Sarah strikes a different chord with us. We’ve lost one of our own who did everything right to keep herself safe. She did what we’re told to do when another woman randomly disappears or winds up in the back of a stranger’s car or at the bottom of a lake. “Don’t be by yourself late at night”, “let your friends and family know where you are at all times”, “don’t wear provocative clothing”. All absolutely useless and meaningless pieces of advice by the way, but if we’re not safe when we take every precaution necessary bar sacrificing our freedom, when are we?

The reason I’m so angry reading said useless advice is because it means nothing. It comes from people who have no idea what it feels like to constantly look over your shoulder when you walk alone. You’re just as unsafe in a fluorescent jacket and trainers as you are if you decided to parade down the street in your underwear. We know not all men are predators and criminals, but how are we meant to know that the man out for a run on the other side of the street can be trusted, or the old man walking his dog behind you? As women we are constantly judging people’s faces, distances, walking paces and clothing to assess whether we can afford to relax for a second or if we need to make a fake phone call to protect ourselves. Sad truth is, we very rarely relax until we’ve crossed the threshold of our homes.

Back to my anger. Like I said, telling us to remain vigilant and to not go out after dark is useless. It infringes on our freedoms for a start, as if we’re the problem, but it also does absolutely nothing, something I know from first hand experience.

I don’t really talk about it much because it was a traumatising experience, but I was preyed upon by a stranger over the course of two years when I was a teenager. We walked the same route to my bus stop to school as his house was next to it. What started off as mundane conversation and small talk between strangers turned into something much more disturbing and I became scared to walk the ten minutes to my bus stop. I was fourteen, it was every day at 7am, I was in full school uniform. I did nothing provocative, but it was me who ended up with a restraining order against a 56 year old and years of social anxiety to this day. I was a child who was too trusting in strangers and didn’t see the harm in talking to someone for all of two minutes a day. Then it started to get strange and I was uncomfortable. The all too familiar patterns that women fear – asking where I live, breaching my personal space, turning up everywhere I went and watching me from his window. I changed my route, my parents drove me to the bus stop, police warnings were given and to no avail. After his first warning from the police he didn’t talk to me. Instead, he resorted to walking right behind me, every morning, almost to the point of stepping on the back of my school shoes, in order to intimidate me. He showed up in the evenings when I walked home so I had to walk to a different street so he didn’t see where I lived. I had my best friend on the phone in my top pocket in case anything happened to me. I had family members nearby walk me home so I wasn’t alone. I even carried a rape alarm in my hands at all times, something which subjected me to teasing and the nickname “rape alarm” at school from cruel classmates who didn’t understand the severe paranoia and anxiety I was suffering from. This went on throughout my GCSE’s and final years of secondary school, when one day a random woman pulled up her car beside me as I walked back from the town centre on a weekend. She told me she lived on the street I walked down in the morning to my bus and that she worried I was being stalked. I told her I knew, my family knew and the police knew but he hadn’t committed a crime yet. She said he had, and had been taking pictures of me and up my school skirt when he was walking so closely behind me. She told me she watched me walk down her street at 7:18am every morning until I reached my bus stop to make sure I was safe and he didn’t touch me.

It felt like I’d been hit by a truck. I was terrified. I ran home to tell my mum. But I was also relieved, because now something could be done about it. My mum picked me up from school early the next day and I missed last period maths to be interviewed at the police station, and eventually I got a restraining order against him until I turned 18 and a measly £100 compensation from his pocket. He had several phones full of unsolicited pictures and I wondered how many more girls he had done this to, as he lived a minute walk away from another secondary school. He eventually moved house but still lived nearby and I was left with the consequences of his actions. Incapable of walking anywhere without straining my neck the amount of times I’d look behind my shoulder, no longer able to go out for runs in the nearby woods at the weekend and forgetting how to interact with strangers because the fear had made my social skills go blurry. In the week before I turned 18, I couldn’t shake the crippling panic that he was going to reappear the day the restraining order expired.

The reason I’m revisiting this traumatic time of my life in this rambly, messy post is because I’m now reminded that it was not my fault. Hearing news like this reminds almost every woman of a time they were cat-called, followed, assaulted or worse. I was a fourteen year old girl walking to school in broad daylight, in a school uniform, with a rape alarm and friends on speed dial in my pocket. I was made fun of by people at school and my friends, even some of my family members treated it as a joke at first when I said I was being followed by an old man. “Oh he’s just lonely and wants someone to talk to, he’s old and harmless!” I didn’t know how to explain he wasn’t an innocent old man with a Zimmer frame and frosty white hair. He was over six feet tall with long arms and creepy, cold eyes. He tried to entice me into his house several times. He followed me home every evening. He took pictures up my school skirt without my knowledge, and yet I was treated as if I was being a dramatic teenager who was trying to stir up drama. Take women seriously. Take girls seriously. This is not fun for us. This is not something we laugh about and text the group chat with. We are scared, and we know when we’re in danger. My stalker was a ticking time bomb and it was only a matter of time before I was put in one of the worst situations and outcomes possible.

Sarah wasn’t a one off or an anomaly. Our hearts ache for her because we know all too well how she must have felt. I’ll never forget her name because I know that she probably thought she was safe because of everything she did to protect herself, but just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, which is not her fault. I’ll never forget Libby Squire’s name because we’ve all made our own way home without friends when we’ve gotten too drunk on a night out, and been too trusting and felt too invincible as alcohol courses through our veins. I’ll never forget Molly McLaren’s name, who couldn’t even just walk to her car after finishing up at the gym without being stabbed to death in the driver’s seat by her ex-boyfriend. This happens too often, and we are the ones that have to scroll through Twitter and see people saying “she shouldn’t have been walking home alone in the dark”. How about men just stop committing violence against women? If you’re not one of those men, you don’t deserve a medal and a pat on the back. We’re not going to thank you for not being a rapist or a murderer. Just listen to women when they tell you they’re tired of feeling unsafe when they walk home. Understand that we often cannot do what we want to do out of the fear of coming across a violent stranger. We can avoid the dark and deserted streets and always have a friend with us but that does not stop criminals being criminals. We should be able to live without fear. It has become too normalised for us to text friends that we got home safe and calculate different, longer routes to avoid unlit streets. Sarah should have been able to walk home on a random Wednesday evening after seeing friends without getting killed.