We live in a world that is not kind to people, especially women. One of the first things I have to teach my students in Women’s Studies is that women are taught to be scared for a reason: if we’re afraid, we won’t venture far from our homes. If we’re afraid, we might not try to do scary things, like be the first person to hold a particular job. If we’re afraid, no one has to work very hard at keeping us in check, because we’ll do that to ourselves.
“But wait a minute,” my students say. “There are good reasons for women to be afraid.”
Well, true. And this is when we discuss what the statistics tell us, and my students learn that they should be more afraid of their fathers and uncles and boyfriends than the stranger in the bushes.
I walked the Shaw Prairie for the first time Wednesday, and I went back for a longer walk yesterday. But after a week here, I’m still trying to leave the world behind: when I hear a rustling in the tall grass, I get nervous. When I hear a sound on the trail behind me, my first thought is that someone’s following--not the more likely explanation, that a squirrel just shot across the path or a bird just landed in one of the bushes. There is no reason to be afraid here. I know that. And still I am.
Today I started wondering if it would be possible to lose that reflex—if I stayed at Ragdale long enough and walked the prairie every day, would I learn to stop being scared? Would it be like when you get a drastic haircut and, for awhile, you keep trying to push your hair behind your ears, even though there’s no hair left for you to push? Eventually, you stop. And maybe, given enough time, given the right circumstances, I could learn to stop worrying that someone—that big scary stranger in the tall grass—was out to get me.
When I was in college I liked to take long walks by myself, sometimes in the arboretum in the afternoon, sometimes in the residential areas after dark. Every one of my friends told me this was dangerous. If I left a fraternity party on my own, I’d get at least three offers to escort me home. I didn’t know, then, that I had more to fear from the people I knew than the people who might be lurking between Here and There. I just knew that I wanted to walk by myself, because I enjoyed being alone and because I refused to be afraid of doing what I wanted. I wasn’t going to be limited by the assumption that someone was waiting to get me.
Maybe what I did was dangerous. I know I wouldn’t do it now, and I know I would yell at my daughter if she did the same. In spite of what I know about the stranger in the bushes, how unlikely an assailant he is, I’m still afraid of him. More afraid, now, than determined to enjoy myself, to live my life the way I want to. And I’m not sure whether this is a bad thing.
I doubt I will ever have the chance to spend enough time on the Ragdale prairie to stop being scared. But it’s good to know there are still some places in this world where that feels like it is, at the very least, a possibility.
2 comments:
While reading your post, I thought of Dar Williams' "When I was a Boy." Have you ever heard that song? It always makes me cry. Always.
That song kills me. It does a very good job of explaining all the many ways in which the world is messed up for all of us.
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