There are many ways in this world to find safety. And there are even more ways to lose that feeling. I think the thing that has been the most painful lesson I have had to learn is that I am the one responsible for my own lack of feeling safe in this world. The choices I have made, the people I have allowed access, the places I have put myself. All of those things eroded a feeling of safety for me.
There are sometimes in this life that no matter what you do, someone else will destroy that feeling of safety. There are people in the world who will break into your home, rob you, rape you and maybe even kill you. But most of us in this country, do not live in places where that is likely to happen every single day.
The most unsafe people are usually people who are familiar to us. If a woman goes missing, it is almost always her significant other that has made her disappear. We are more likely to be assaulted and raped by people we know, people we trust, or people who are in positions of trust in our lives (teachers, step parents, friends, siblings). But so very often, it is those very people who injure us the most significantly and are granted repeated access.
Today we elect a new president. And I voted some weeks ago, so no last minute scramble for me to the polls. And I can tell you with all honesty, I voted for the person who made me feel most safe. When all the other things were considered, I decided what mattered most to me, more than reproductive rights, equality, foreign policy, economics or anything else is the ability to feel safe. And one of our candidates engenders that for me, and the other one makes me feel so unsafe that I am not sure what I will do if I he gets elected.
I cannot believe he is a choice. But I suppose there will always be choices like him in this world. Men (almost always) who grab for power and pussy and treat other people as if they are pawns to be exploited, manipulated, lied to and maligned. It is disgusting. I am personally embarrassed that he is even an option in today’s world. I am sad, and somewhat despondent that someone who makes me and so many other people feel so unsafe is even a possibility.
And for all those that support him, I think I get you. When faced with the fear of living in today’s world with all its perils and percussions, we have a choice...we can move away from dangerous psychopaths or we can pull them closer. And I have to admit that I engaged in that whole “keep your friends close but your enemies closer” ideology for way longer than I would like to admit. It was as if I believed that my goodness would rub off on narcissistic fuckers who care for no one but themselves. I wasted a lot of time, energy and life on that particular endeavor. Then I woke up and saw my plight and what I was doing. And I stopped it.
As a woman in this country, I do not feel safe a great deal of the time. I am always looking over my shoulder. I fear camping alone because of men, not bears or mountain lions. I go on long road trips alone because I love it, but there is not one moment of any of that road time that I do not think about all the things that could happen to me...and the ones that scare me most are the ones perpetuated by men who think they can have what they want, when they want and are free to take it without recrimination or repercussion.
I am not object. I am a person, flesh and blood just like the men that inhabit the world. But somehow my plight, the plight of all women everywhere, is to spend the whole of your life, attempting to avoid being beaten, raped, or killed by a man who feels that he owns you. It is an intergenerational trauma that I do not believe we have even begun to scratch the surface. And I pray, please for all that is holy, that women’s time has come to rise up and create a better world for all.
I do not hate Trump because he is stupid, or cruel or a fascist. I, in fact do not hate him at all, I fear him. He embodies everything I think is wrong in this world. And just the thought of him makes me feel completely and totally unsafe in my own skin. I am a woman and vulnerable. I don’t like that fact, but it is true. No matter what I do, how much I work out, how strong I make myself, I will never be able to fend off a man who is hell bent on taking what he wants, which includes my life.
That is a terrible reality to wake with everyday. But it is the reality of every woman I know whether they have done the work to own it or not. There is not one woman alive that doesn’t look over her shoulder in the parking lot, that doesn’t check her backseat, that doesn’t know that her safety in this world precarious and unpredictable. And also know that most often the most unsafe men in our lives are the ones most familiar to us.
So on this Election Day, I cast my vote for safety. To not allow a man I know to be unstable, riotous, above the law, a felon, a pussy grabbing misogynist, demented and awful to get any closer to me or my daughter, or mother, or friend. This year I cast my vote for distance from all that I have had the unfortunate experience to live through...men without accountability and free license to take what isn’t theirs to take. Ask any woman you know, and you will hear volumes of stories about the times they have felt unsafe in their own home.
This is not all men, and this is not an indictment of men. There are many, many good ones. And I have been privileged to know them, love them, raise them and partner with them. But this one man, who today runs for the highest office in the land, he is the epitome of all that is wrong with men, all that is wrong today. I don’t expect you to see it my way, but please, just consider whether or not you feel safe with him. Would you trust your daughter to be left alone in a room with him? Really? And if he does make you feel safe with all his hate mongering and viciousness, perhaps maybe ask yourself what about your past has led you to a place where this kind of bully and sociopath is your beacon of safety. Perhaps, just maybe it might be time to reevaluate your own definition of safety and who in this world makes you feel secure, safe, and free from the ever present fear that your body is not your own, your voice is not worthy of being heard, and your mind is something to be lied to and gaslit until you can no longer distinguish the true from the false.
I don’t know what Kamala will do for us, but I do know that she does not make me feel unsafe. And he, he makes me not want to leave my house again. It was an easy choice when safety became my only criteria...I beg you to at least consider that today as you cast your ballot and vote for freedom, really.
Do you feel safe in your body as you vote?
Do you feel like your vote will make you feel more safe or less?
And let that feeling of safe or unsafe be your guide...
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