“You’re not coming back.”
“What?”
“If we’re meant to find each other, we will.”
“All right, yeah, ok! The universe can guide us, right? You’re so wise. Wish me luck!”
“I don’t believe in luck!”
22.
My brain wires are fried. I’m definitely going for that walk now. The street seems quiet. There are no stars, and the sun has officially set, and the air is thick and immobilizing. I keep expecting to hear thunder, and I don’t. The pressure on my skull is immense, and there aren’t enough Christmas lights along this street to distract me. I have very high expectations when it comes to suburbia at Christmas time. I mean, if you’re going to have a house, and a family, and a fence, and everything, make the most out of it. Use every socially sanctioned opportunity that you have at your disposal to adorn and celebrate the fact of having it.
This street still has a lot going for it, though. The houses are very eclectic. Most of them are Victorian terrace houses, and Victorian terrace houses are incapable of cultivating any kind of uniformity or predictability. It’s like the original aim of consistency in their design led them down this completely unruly and erratic path. Now, they think for themselves. They’ve seen things, and they know things, and they have different names, and different gardens, and different paint jobs, and different detailing, and different extensions, and different histories.
There’s one with an iron gate that’s wide open, and the footpath is in the process of being unearthed by what looks like a very insistent and very abundant fig tree. The front door is also open, and a red-and-gold Christmas wreath is hanging across the security door. I can see a hallway, with wooden floors, and a large brown poodle sleeping across them. The lights are on and the sound of classical music is wafting from somewhere down the back of the house.
Number 42 has wind chimes on the veranda and children’s bikes strewn across the front porch’s tiles. On the upstairs balcony there’s a washing line filled with striped pajamas and tiny T-shirts and Spiderman undies. There are succulents lining each of the windowsills, and the front door is shut, with a handmade angel hanging off its knocker. I don’t think anybody’s home. They’re probably at Carols by Candlelight. Or maybe that’s tomorrow night.
There’s a pool party happening out the back of this next place, which has a very high, and very thick, and very black, and very modern fence around it. It’s like a fortress. There’s an intercom, too, which I’m going to press, because when I see a button in public, I can’t not press it. I can hear pop music and splashing and Marco Polo being played, and I can smell barbecued meats and sweet sauces and cigarette smoke. The adults must be doing the drinking, and the smoking, and the cooking, and the kids must be doing the playing.
The next few houses are silent and still. Most of the blinds are drawn, and there aren’t many cars parked on the street. Christmas must have called their tenants elsewhere. There’s no moonlight and I’ve just noticed that there’s a guy walking behind me. He’s, maybe, three hundred meters away? I don’t want to look because that’d give away the fact that I was noticing him and being affected by his presence. Which I am. Yet I don’t want him to know that. I don’t want to give him the satisfaction. Especially if he’s a serial killer, or a rapist, or some sort of sadistic fuck who gets off on freaking people out and my fear is exactly what he wants, or some shit.
So many women living in Melbourne have been murdered in this exact same situation in recent years. One woman died a couple suburbs away from here, and when she did, the sense of safety that I felt in this city really shifted. She was twenty-two, and this guy followed her on foot for a few miles, and then raped her, and strangled her to death in the middle of Princes Park. I can see its treetops from where I’m walking. It was after midnight and she had even texted her boyfriend saying, “almost there,” and she never arrived.
Now, whenever I’m walking through the city at night, or I’m going down a darkened street on my own, and I see another woman doing the same, I want to cry. And whenever I see a man, I feel frightened.
I’m also, like, really uncomfortable with people walking behind me. Not just in moments like this, when I’m literally a girl walking alone at night. I’m uncomfortable about it on busy streets, and when I’m wandering around shops, and standing in queues. If I can sense people behind me I get super creeped out. Like, fuck off, you know? My back starts to ache, and my jaw becomes tense, and I want to rip my way out, and roar at everything.
I might cross the road and see what happens. I’ve always been told to run and hide from scary things and yet, conversely, I’m also supposed to be ready to go into combat with them. Like, somehow, I’m meant to have my keys between my fingers and be feigning confidence right up until the moment when I’m screaming for help.
I also have this terrible habit of becoming so focused on what’s frightening me and making me nervous that I can’t comprehend anything else. I become mesmerized by it. One time I was driving past a motorcycle accident with a friend and although she couldn’t look at the body lying on the ground, I couldn’t look away.
Here was a guy wearing a leather motorcycle jacket, with a red stripe across the middle, and thick black jeans, and sneakers. I couldn’t see his face, because he still had his helmet on. He was lying on his back, which is better than being on your front, right? And none of his limbs were twisted or mangled or anything. Although, he was very still, and that was a bit unnerving.
Something propels me to face whatever frightens me, no matter how much it hurts, or how much it might adversely affect me. It can take days, weeks, months, or even years to come to terms with what I have seen—and yet I have an insatiable need to see it.
Like, I could be stabbed multiple times, and I swear to god I will hear myself thinking, “Fascinating, fascinating, I wonder what has driven them to this, and what I represent to them, and what they must be going through to have taken such a drastic action, and could I ever imagine doing the same? How have I attracted this? What is this going to mean for my life, and soul, and all of the things that I am destined to learn? And I certainly didn’t expect the sensation of being stabbed to be like getting my ears pierced, where there isn’t really any pain, just a strong awareness of something penetrating me and piercing my flesh? Wow.”
I stay with what hurts, and I’m often the last one standing.
23.
He’s still behind me, I think. It’s a bit too shadowy back there to be able to tell. I’m just going to keep moving, because I’m not sure if there’s room to transmute anything into love, or into empathy. Most of the time that’s deemed to be “dangerous” and “silly” and “idealistic” anyway. Plus I don’t know how to create space for it mentally when I’m freaking out. I once read this book about how to non-violently communicate, and it talked about how to do so in high-stakes situations, and I can’t remember what it said now.
He’s crossed the road. Great. I’ve got another full street length and a bit to go before I’ve done the whole block and I’m back at the party. If he gets too close, I’ll go straight into someone’s front yard and ring the doorbell. Or, I’ll knock. Like, really loudly.
In moments like this I often wonder what would happen if Crime Stoppers wasn’t about catching criminals after the fact. What if it was actually about catching them beforehand. Like, what if we could call Crime Stoppers when we felt ourselves potentially about to commit a crime? I can imagine feeling ve
ry scared before committing a crime. There must be millions of tiny decisions and warning signs that lead up to the point of finally acting it out. Imagine if one of those tiny decisions could be, “Oh, shit, yeah, I’d better call Crime Stoppers, I think I’m about to do something potentially violent and/or dangerous because I can’t see a way out,” and then the police’s job would be to chuck us into counseling, or into rehab, for a certain period of time, depending upon the potential offense.
It could be like Suicide Watch, except we’d Crime Watch ourselves, and each other, and make sure that we’re all ok, and if shit gets hectic we could go to therapy. I guess therapy and rehab aren’t the answer to everything. Ashrams and meditation retreats and health spas are pretty powerful, too. And I suppose there’s no guarantee that we still wouldn’t commit the crime.
Yet imagine a system that could provide this amazing stopgap where everyone became involved in the prevention of crime, rather than just catching and punishing criminals. It could seriously save the world, dissolve all of the stigmas around criminals and the ways in which they’re dehumanized. It could totally revolutionize the prison system. Like, what prison system, you know? It’d be a therapy system. Then potential victims could be notified, and families and friends who are concerned about loved ones could call in, and businesses being targeted could be alerted as to what’s happening, and everyone could get a memo or whatever.
I kept running, though, because that’s what you’re supposed to do. I evaded the guy, and all of the demons that came with him, and, because of that, I became the hero of my own story. Well, not really. He still haunts me. I didn’t really escape him. I mean, he’s following me right now. Every step that I take, he takes one, too.
And I would rather die than run again. I’ve become, like, morally opposed to running away because I don’t want to spread fear and I don’t want there to be anything to run from. “Running” from another human being doesn’t even make sense.
I want to be able to look everyone on this planet in the fucking face and if that means looking death in the fucking face, then so be it. We all have to look it in the face eventually. It can’t be as bad as everyone makes it out to be. I mean, the way in which we die could be violent, or unexpected, or tragic, or whatever. Yet death in-and-of-itself is just what it is, and I don’t think it means any harm.
Fearing death seems like such a limited, earth-bound, mortal thing. Not a universal, intergalactic, expansive, infinite thing.
After reading all of these ancient Egyptian texts, and absorbing their attitudes toward life and death and the underworld and the afterlife, my perspective on my own so-called demise completely changed. I even studied Cleopatra and committed suicide in front of an acting class, and when I came out the other side, I understood that death doesn’t even exist. Not in the way that we think it does. It’s just been turned into this high and mighty omniscient force that we’re supposed to succumb to, and be scared of, and controlled by.
Yet death unites us in the same way that birth does. It’s something that we all have in common. It’s a part of us. It’s a doorway, and just because we don’t understand what’s in the next room, it doesn’t mean that there isn’t a next room, or that the next room is something to be scared of. It just means that we haven’t been into it before. Or maybe we have, and we just can’t remember.
Besides. We don’t just go from living to dead and that’s it. We keep going. Whenever those I love have died they’ve gotten bigger somehow. Not smaller. They haven’t just disappeared. Even if I’ve missed their physical forms, and I’ve grieved the loss of them, they’ve remained with me. To this day I can still see, smell, and sense those in my life who have died. I can still think their thoughts, and hear their voices, and touch their skin, and feel their feelings. I can still empathize with their yearnings, and frustrations, and connect with their wants, and needs, and aches, and pains. Where does that fit into the narrative of dying and leaving everything and everyone forever? Yeah. It doesn’t.