Tag: Terror

The fear of LWF (living while female)

I’ve been thinking about writing the following piece for a while, but my strict regime of running every day and near nightly commitments have been eating up a lot of my time.

Simply put, I am knackered.

But it’s not just my schedule that’s run me off of my feet.

It’s the absolute and all-exhausting condition of LWF – Living While Female – that has got me tired too.

Three weeks ago I was two-thirds of the way through a thirty kilometer run when I stopped to use the bathroom at the park at 29th Avenue Station.

In doing so, I literally walked right into a man who had been hiding behind the door.

My fear and surprise were weirdly trumped by my desperate need to use the facilities, and without even stopping to analyze the situation, I emphatically ordered him to, “GET OUT OF HERE.”

He mumbled an apology and something about the men’s washroom being disgusting, and clutching his backpack, he slowly slunk outside.

Once he was gone, I closed the door and right away checked to see if I could lock it from the inside. Unfortunately, that wasn’t an option, and I realized what a vulnerable position I was in, without the safety of a deadlock.

Looking around I could see that he has properly trashed the space, and I tiptoed my way into the first stall, being sure to lock it right away.

It was then that I could see that the man had not left the premises, and that he was standing right outside of the building.

As I squatted over the toilet, I watched between the slit of the stall door as he slowly began to open the door, just an inch or two.

Immediately I felt like I was going to throw up. I didn’t know if I should yell at him, or try to reason with him, or just phone the police.

“Sir. You have to close the door,” I told him, trying to keep my voice level, but firm.

And he closed the door.

But only for a second.

Right away, he opened it again, only this time a little wider, and a little quicker.

“SIR. PLEASE CLOSE THE DOOR.”

It was impossible this time to keep my voice level. I could feel my heart punching hard, straight through my chest and my head, fuzzy and hot. Tears began streaming down my cheeks.

“I AM GOING TO PHONE THE POLICE I AM PHONING THE POLICE,” I stammered.

By now he was already back inside of the bathroom and I could see that he too was panicky.

“No! Miss! Your problem is not with me. I promise! I am not here to hurt you,” he replied.

Standing, crying in the stall, I asked him, “Will you let me leave this bathroom?”

“Yes,” he said. “Of course. I need to hide in here. From the man in the park with the gun.”

“I need you to back away from the door, please. Go to the wall.”

And he did. But as he walked to the wall, I noticed that he was holding a pen in his hand.

“You have to drop the pen sir.”

At this ask, he got very jumpy and apologetic, and immediately dropped the pen and apologized.

“I am sorry miss. I am not a problem. There is a man. You should phone the police, but tell him about that man.”

At this point, I opened the stall and ran out of the bathroom, calling 911 as soon as I got far enough away from the building.

Just as the operator picked up, I noticed that there was a cop monitoring a speed trap down the block, so I apologized into the phone and instead approached the officer.

“There is a man in the woman’s washroom who has absolutely trashed the place and who just scared the hell out of me who is saying that there is a man with a gun in the park and I think he is paranoid and high and came in there when I asked him not to.” I didn’t even stop for breath as the words plummeted out of me.

“Oh. Yeah. Well, these kinds of places are never that clean to begin with…” is how he responded to my panic.

“Ummm, what?” was my incredulous reaction (only inside of my head).

Outside of my head, I said, “Well, I’ve used that space quite a bit over the last few months and it’s never looked like that. Plus, it’s a man in the WOMANS washroom,” I emphasized and reiterated.

“I grew up in this neighbourhood. This kind of thing happens all of the time,” he then told me.

I stood there, staring at this man, this man who will never, ever use a washroom and fear a woman coming in and raping, or beating him at 1pm on a sunny Spring afternoon, and started crying all over again.

“Well, can you please go over there and check it out?”

After inhaling for what seemed like a minute, he started to pack up his radar gear, and eventually rode his motorcycle over to the park.

I didn’t stay to check and see if he actually spoke to that man.

Instead, I tried to start running again, but everything felt leaden. Felt bad.

So I made it to Nanaimo station and skytrained home.

All the way home I fumed. Angry about my run being ruined. Angry about the cop not caring. Angry about that drugged up man who felt like he needed to be in that space. Angry about a society that doesn’t give a shit about substance abuse. Angry at myself for being in that situation.

But mostly angry that I cannot be a 31-year-old woman out running at noon on a Saturday without the fear of walking into a woman’s washroom and being terrorized.

I am just so over it.

I needed to use the bathroom.

And there will definitely be a next time when I will need to use a bathroom.

Only next time, if it comes down to it, I’m just going to shit my pants.

And then I’ll make that cop drive me home.

Because then maybe he’ll care about protecting me.

Nothing to fear, but fear itself. (But also dying. That too.)

Want to know a secret?

This past week I ran away.

Well, not really.

On Tuesday night, I left behind the rainy streets of Vancouver, in exchange for the rainy shores of British Columbia’s Sunshine Coast.

(That’s a paradox, no? A rainy Sunshine Coast?)

For the next two and a bit days, I camped out in front of a fire and wrote, ran, read (and Netflixed) my little heart out.

It was the VWOZNOW solo retreat extravaganza of 2014!

You see, at my job, (which I love), I accrue quite a bit of overtime, and I am lucky enough that I am able to bank these hours and take them as time in lieu.

Which means that before the bell strikes twelve on December 31st, I am required to use up all of this vacation, lest it all be for not.

So being that time was a-ticking, and knowing how much I love the wild woods of our province’s eerily beautiful (and desperately sodden) temperate rain forest, Marc suggested that I take a bit of this time and have an adventure or two on my own.

Sad of course that he couldn’t join me, I did quite like the idea. I mean, how often is it that you are gifted with extra days off, combined with the chance to do all of the things you love so dearly?

So, after work on Tuesday, I jumped in our little car and drove to Horseshoe Bay to catch the 5:20pm ferry.

I arrived a little early, so I bought a chai latte and walked around the village, marvelling at the strings of Christmas lights, twinkling along the darkening waterfront.

Clutching my umbrella and trying my best to dodge the many puddles freckling the almost-empty streets, I wished that I had brought a pair of gloves and that I had thought to wear better shoes.

Once back in the safety and warmth of my car, I engaged in some Twitter tomfoolery with the CBC’s As It Happens, and was for a brief moment, a social media superstar.

When I arrived at the Langdale terminal an hour or so later, I hit the road in earnest. I swore it could have been two o’clock in the morning, what with how dark the evening had fallen. It was also raining like a raining thing, which forced me to be extra careful as I drove.

I stopped briefly in Sechelt to purchase some stuff for dinner and breakfast, as well as a bottle of wine and a bag of G.H. Cretors Chicago Mix popcorn, because, alas, I am addicted to this crack-cocaine (disguised as popcorn) life-ruining snack.

ADDICTED.

Anywho, I was soon back in the driver’s seat and on my way to the cabin. I had made three mixed CDs for the trip, and in between my loud singing jags, I listened to a number of interviews on the on-going botch-up of Veteran’s Affairs here in the Great White North.

(Hence the need for the loud singing jags.)

Eventually I made it to my home-away-from-home around seven o’clock, and I set about to settling in.

Unfortunately I was met with two, how shall I say, uncomfortable and unforeseen circumstances that needed immediate attending.

The first was that both of the cabin’s fire alarms were out of batteries and they were going off at different intervals.

Now, anyone who has ever before heard a fire alarm knows that their sounds are incredibly jarring and weirdly disturbing. Plus, one of them had a voice that kept announcing the same phrases over and over again: “LOW BATTERY – DISABLE” or “CARBON MONOXIDE – MONOXIDE DE CARBON” or “FIRE – FEU”.

(You’ve got to love living in a bilingual country as it affords you the curtesy of having the crap scared out of you in both of our official languages! I look forward to thanking my parents for all of those years in French immersion come the day when I burn to death in a very unfortunate Dark Souls-related candle accident.)

Anyways, the other unfortunate factor was that when I entered the kitchen – after putting my bags into the bedroom – I noticed that the second door (the one that opens into the kitchen) was about five to six inches ajar.

Meaning, open.

To the night air.

YIKES.

I stood there, frozen, feeling my blood run cold.

“SERIAL” and “KILLER” I think were the first two words that popped into my head.

Let me tell you, the fact every thirty seconds two separate fire alarms kept going off, announcing my impending and immediate doom, was one thing I really could have dealt without (especially at what seemed like a very critical juncture of my life.)

Grabbing my phone, I texted Marc.

He didn’t understand what I was talking about, so I phoned him and explained the situation as succinctly and as quickly as I could.

As he voiced his concern, I tried to find a sharp, easily wieldable knife.

“What are you going to do?” he asked.

“I am going to go room by room with you on the phone. With this paring knife,” I explained.

I looked down at the small blade in my hand.

“Good luck,” I told myself.

In hindsight, really, not that brilliant of a scheme.

As the hilarious Jackie over at Ambling and Rambling put it when I afterwards told her of my cunning plan:

Oh, so, [Marc] could hear you being murdered by the man who disarmed you?

To which I replied:

EXACTLY.

Anyways, I managed to swallow all of my thoughts of Michael Myers and Jason Vorhees, and searched the entire place.

Once convinced that I was, indeed, alone, I set about to finally quieting the damned fire alarms.

An electrician, folks, I am not.

However, I did eventually manage to silence my bilingual nemesis. I then made a giant fire and turned on the first Neil Diamond record I could find.

By this point I was pretty hungry, but between my shattered nerves and ringing ear drums, every single notion I had about cooking a meal had flown right out the window.

So I just opened the bag of popcorn and poured myself a giant glass of wine.

Which, all in all, was not a bad way to kick off a relaxation retreat.

(Oh, and the popcorn and wine helped too.)

IMG_20141126_104120283