How to Learn to Trust, Even When You're Afraid

On sunny days when you’re about to start a new job, and you’re running errands to get them out of the way, about the last thing you expect is to be accosted in a parking lot by an angry man intent on dominating you and the space you take up.

Maybe, you should expect such a thing when you take up space as a woman of fairly small stature. Possibly, the risk increases the more confident or upbeat you feel.

Or it’s just that you should always be scanning every environment for every possible threat, the exits away from them, the places where you can shrink and hide and not exist, just for a little while.

You know… the way you used to when you lived in more actively hostile environments.

The way the door shut: gentle or final. The huff of annoyance. The click of a tongue. The stomp of a footstep. The strained tone. The atmosphere in the house was heavy with the weight of condensed, unspoken resentments.

The cloudbursts could come at any time. You wished they were easier to predict.

That you were better at predicting them.

You don’t want to have to live this way anymore. You hoped the new job and the accomplishment of errands and the beautiful day would help polish off the tarnish of past traumas, buff your shine, leave only the glow of new confidence and a sense of power.

You remember those are exactly the things that triggered many of the men you’ve been closest to over the decades of your life.

After the encounter with Angry Parking Lot Man, you remember something you read long ago about the way a prey animal dispels excess energy after it survives a predator’s attack.

You let yourself tremble for as long as you need. You shed tears and breathe deep and pace the parking lot where you wait on hold to talk to a police officer.

A few hours later, you realize something worked: the encounter itself doesn’t bother you anymore.

But encountering other men, even ones you think you should be able to trust? Them, you’re not so sure about.

Because they, too, could turn on a dime. Much like they used to when you knew them better than any stranger in a parking lot, and for the same reason: you took up space they felt entitled to.

Later, you wonder if Angry Parking Lot Man actually hoped you’d scream back at him. If he looked down at you in your car and decided you were attractive and, in some bizarre mating ritual, engaged in an especially aggressive form of foreplay.

You wonder if he ever realized how deeply he terrified you. If he cared. If he was happy and proud of himself for doing so.

You wish you’d handled yourself differently, although you aren’t sure how, because he was so much bigger and louder than you, and there were no witnesses. He could’ve done anything he wanted to you, and you both knew it.

You know your lizard brain didn't want to stick around because it interpreted the situation as "if we stick around not engaging, he will be angrier and more of a threat, thus we must leave."

Nonetheless, you wish you hadn’t let him bully you into removing your presence from “his” space. You wish you had a weapon of some kind. A lot of people, both men and women, would say you should.

You know you’d be “that crazy bitch brandishing it” if you did.

Later on, you try to engage with an activist group you’re a part of. The subject of one conversation is “meeting people where they are,” and your mind can’t help but go to Angry Parking Lot Man, or the notion that you somehow should’ve been prepared to meet him where he was.

If you’d just been able to hang in there, understand his point of view, listen and reflect and ameliorate. Not ask so much of him as yourself: to stand down, be less threatening, honor and respect your voice.

The way you were raised, like a good girl should.

You wonder if you’re just too messed up to participate in human community and society at large. If your hypervigilance ruins your capacity to organize and unite for a greater good. If you suck up too much oxygen with the intensity of emotions you feel in and after encounters like this.

If your intensity gets in the way of rational, level-headed, quality activism.

But then you remember the way abusers attack your voice and your point of view and your perceptiveness. The way they accuse you of undermining productivity and community and trust with your questions. The way they say you’re too demanding.

The way they isolate you. The way the isolation gives them easier access to the vulnerable they insist they're helping. The way they carefully control what they offer, manipulating the people they claim to care about, training them to be grateful for whatever breadcrumbs they get.

The way they twist healthy concepts like boundaries and energy.

You realize their tactics are all about atomizing community, dividing and conquering.

And that your hypervigilance serves a purpose. It’s not about becoming so distrustful of others that you continue to isolate yourself. Instead it’s about recognizing threats, and threat responses, enough to articulate them.

Because articulation is communication. And communication is how you find community.

Maybe not the one that comprises angry people and those they prefer to dominate. But maybe, instead, the one that comprises survivors like you; the ones who recognize themselves, and all they aspire to be, in your words.

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