Member-only story
Safety In the Dark: Recalibrating My Nervous System
*Trigger warning, assault, stalking, domestic violence, and rape are briefly mentioned in this piece.
Today I walked home alone in the dark, and I felt fine. In a small town of 7,500 people on the North Island of New Zealand, I walked in the dark for more than a mile.
I did not brace, prepared for every dark opening, alley, or driveway behind a suspiciously tall bush. I was alert but relaxed. Not because I controlled my breath, made it audible, or specifically focused on my belly, moving in and out, my breathing was fluid, as I walked up an incline slowly at the only pace I could. My entire nervous system, my legs, shoulders, breath, and mind uniformly knew that I could go at my pace. I did not have the memory of rape and assault before the age of twenty buzzing lowly through every cell as I passed dark car windows or heard an unidentifiable noise in the distance. I did not remember that time I ran away down a stairwell at the parking lot at the mall.
A small piece of me feels sadness that this walk home makes the headlines of my life. In the United States, living alone for the better part of my adulthood, I learned how to fain safety. I even lied to myself. I laughed loudly, spoke on the phone as I walked, allowed my hips to swing left and right, but there was always an alertness; I was prepared for the…
