nothing happened

it is hard for me to be kind to men lately. even the nice ones. especially the nice ones, who wear their goodness like a merit badge, who seem to believe being harmless absolves them from the harm.

i am trying to find a way through this feeling, but it is exhausting to share a world with people for whom existence is frictionless. people who move through their days without strategy. for whom a body is just a body, not a liability. for whom being alive does not require advance planning.

a day, for me, is not a unit of time. it is a sequence of calculations. it is a series of small decisions made in the service of getting through it intact. it is not about fear in the cinematic sense. not dark alleys or sprinting footsteps or a shadow breaking into a run. that fantasy belongs to men, too—the dramatic version. the real thing is quieter. it hums. it is constant. it is the low-grade burn of awareness, the mental math running underneath everything else, the adjustments so ingrained they stop feeling like choices.

this is what it takes to make it through a day without being hurt.

men seem unaware of this. or maybe they know and think we are exaggerating. or maybe they know and do not care. i honestly can’t tell. what i do know is that they get to call this anxiety, or pessimism, or trauma, because they do not have to live inside it. they get to mistake preparation for pathology.

there is no way to show them what life is like. i need them to understand anyway. because even the good ones are part of it. because everyone is a threat until proven otherwise, and the proof expires quickly. that is not paranoia. it is training. it is information gathered over time and stored in the body.

in fifth grade, during sex ed, we were allowed to ask questions. i asked, what is rape and why do people do it. i’d heard the word on npr in my mom’s car. i didn’t want to ask her.

my teacher froze. he opened the dictionary. he read one definition aloud.
rape seed. an old world herb. brassica napus. grown for forage. for oil. for birds.

he laughed.

i knew he had left something out. i am still angry at him for that.

my mom told me later. i asked her later that day, but i think i already knew. i think that’s why i didn’t want to ask her.

not long after, i told her i would rather be murdered than raped. if you are murdered, i reasoned, your life is over. you do not have to live in a body that remembers. i was a child when i said this—clear, certain. it must have shattered her to hear it in my little girl voice. but it was obvious to me. death ends. violation does not. the worst thing is not dying. it is continuing to live in a body that has been taken from you.

i haven’t been murdered. i have been raped. i am glad to be alive. i am furious that i have to be. i am furious that this is ordinary.

anyway, this is what it takes to remain unharmed.

---

5:30am
leggings. socks. sports bra. big shirt. nothing tight. a men’s jacket, oversized and anonymous so from far away i might look like someone worth leaving alone. pepper spray on my keys. headlamp on. dog awake. it’s still dark. there are women on the corner in heels and thin dresses. i worry that they are cold.

i do not look over my shoulder much on this walk. i have a pitbull. she is the closest thing to armor i own. nobody fucks with a girl and her pitbull. with her, i feel the way men must feel always: unremarkable, unafraid, unthinking.

6:35am
pilates done. sneakers back on. dog in the car. hills. mostly women on the trail so i am almost relaxed. headphones in, but only one ear covered, volume lower than i want. i need to hear footsteps. breath. branches. the sound of someone deciding something. even when i relax, i am alert. relaxation is just another posture.

9am

showered, dressed, out of eggs. big sweater on over my top. i move my ring from my right hand to my left hand (ring finger) before i leave the house. the man at the corner store once wrote my name down from my card. said he wanted to look me up. turned my social media private on the walk back. now i make myself someone else’s. that way he won’t bother with me. that way i am safe and invisible. i pay cash. he brushes his fingers along my hand as i hand him the bills. he sees the ring and his hand drops. i feel embarrassed. walk home a different way.

there are men across the street by a pickup. i feel their eyes before i hear their mouths. i do not have the dog. they do not know i am not to be fucked with. i hold the pepper spray in my hand. it is hot pink. it fits perfectly in my palm.

11am

gas station. i use a napkin to touch the pump because i read somewhere that women are being drugged that way now. there is always a new way. gas is expensive. fear is free.

1:15pm
walking back to my car from brunch. side street. quiet. two men approach from the other side. i see my car. too far. i don’t look at them. looking is an invitation. one crosses toward me.
“hold on.”
i walk faster without running.
“you’re really pretty, what’s your name?”
i hear myself say no thanks in a voice that sounds like a laugh. it is not a laugh. i unlock the car.
“i’m giving you a compliment,” he shouts. “i wanna give you something.”
i get in the car. slam the door. lock it.
“fucking ugly ass bitch,” he says, walking away, his friend laughing.
my heart won’t slow down. it is a siren. i feel guilty. i don’t want a man who scared me to think i am unkind.

3:30pm
parking structure at the grove. park close to the elevators, so no matter when i am done, there will be witnesses. i do not ever park in corners of structures. witnesses matter. i take a photo of where i parked.

6:30pm
before i get in the car, i check underneath. someone used to hide under women’s cars and cut their achilles tendons. immobilized them first, then did the other thing.

i do not remember when i learned to be scared of that. there is always something new to be scared of.

there is no one under my car. i check the trunk. the backseat. then again. only then do i breathe.

7:25pm
another walk. no headphones now. the dog beside me. safety is never absolute. it is negotiated hourly.

9:16pm

home. bed. inside the walls, i am mostly safe. unless someone breaks in, kills the dog, then kills me. that happens too, but it feels like a story, not a plan. i sleep far from the door anyways, just in case.

i fall asleep listening to men tell stories from their youth about hitchhiking and risk and tempting fate because their lives are too uneventful without it. it is astonishing, the risks they invent out of boredom, the things they invent just to feel afraid.

---

this was an uneventful day.
i was not attacked.
i was not followed.
i was not hurt.

nothing happened.

and still, my body never left me alone. it stayed half-awake all day. shoulders lifted. jaw clenched. breath shallow. keys threaded between my fingers like a habit i didn’t choose. routes revised in real time. clothing selected not for comfort but for outcome. i carried my body the way you carry glass: careful not to drop it, careful not to let anyone else decide how it breaks.

nothing happened because i was careful.

because i anticipated men i had not yet met. because i rehearsed refusals before they were needed. because i measured distance and speed and tone. because i learned to swallow fear and call it politeness. because i understood, early, that being agreeable is sometimes the difference between walking away and not.

this is the part that does not translate. the exhaustion of being the one who has to notice everything. the way vigilance becomes muscle memory. the way it colonizes rest. the way it rewires joy and spontaneity until even pleasure feels provisional. the way it teaches you that your body is always one miscalculation away from becoming a crime scene, a story, a warning told to someone else.

i am angry at men, and it is not only because of what some of them do. it is because of what all of them are allowed not to think about.

the luxury of moving through the world unbraced. of walking at night without inventorying exits. of getting into an uber without tracking the route, without texting a screenshot, without staying alert for the moment when the car does not turn where it should. they get to be spontaneous. they get to follow curiosity instead of contingency plans.

they get to forget their bodies. i have never forgotten mine.

this day did not happen in a vacuum. it happened so that somewhere else, someone walked without calculating risk. looked without preparing for consequence. trusted the world to catch him instead of test him.

my safety is not accidental. it is subsidized by attention. by restraint. by the quiet, daily narrowing of my life until it fits through the eye of a needle called survival.

nothing happened because i did not get to be careless.
nothing happened because i did not get to be unaware.
nothing happened because i carried the danger inside my own body instead of letting it reach me.

this is what an uneventful day costs.