Sunglasses Always Fit

Thank you so much for the check-ins and support about the bad thing. It’s taken a minute to process. Posting about it probably isn’t for everyone, but I’ve lived abroad for twelve years, through some preeeetty crazy times (my highest blog traffic ever was on Friday the 13th of March, 2020, when Covid was two months deep in Hong Kong but just hitting the States! Wild.), so it seems normal to me to crowdsource highs and lows to the internet as a way to deal with things. 

A recap – Last Sunday I was at home, finishing up a weekend working on my capstone project for my Masters’, in jammies with my mouthguard because I was grinding so hard (literally and figuratively. I am hilarious!). About 2pm, I took a break to scroll my phone in bed. I live in a studio; there are no doors except the metal one to the outside hallway. My friend lives across the hall, but was away. As I zoned out, I heard her door unlock, open, close. Some movement, I don’t know, I was playing Candy Crush (level 7281 requires focus) and about to fall asleep. Then I heard more keys in doors, it sounded like mine? but – sound carries a lot here. 

I looked up, and suddenly my door opened, 

and a large man walked right into my studio. 

Now . . . if this same scenario happened to a man – laying in bed, jammied, and a woman walked in the door – somehow it’s like a very sexy scenario full of fun possibilities. For a woman? It is all my nightmares coming true. It is the kidnap/rape/murder scenario that has played out in my mind a hundred times already, now happening in my home.

I can still feel the cold drop in my stomach, sweat pooling, and every nerve firing. My ears ringing. I know now it was adrenaline absolutely flooding my body so that I could spring from bed and bear fight a 6 foot tall man who outweighed me by about sixty pounds. All the curtains were drawn in my studio, I couldn’t see who it was, but I sprang up and started shouting “What are you doing? Who are you? Who do you think you are? What do you think you’re doing?” (insert some sailor speak, to be more accurate). 

I live in Guatemala, so the man did not understand anything but my tone, but he said simply “Oh, I didn’t know anyone was here,” in Spanish, as if that was supposed to mitigate my fear and make the situation acceptable. Like . . . this is an odd thing to say, my dude.

I pounced out of bed, ripped out my mouthguard and charged towards him. Once close enough, I recognized him as the guy who does some maintenance work around our property. He’s someone that has gone into my neighbor’s apartment without permission before, that my landlord has accused of being drunk and lazy and taking advantage of her kindness (but she’s a racist, gaslighting piece of work who does not actually know kindness, so). But recognizing him did not ease my fear or rage at all, because, sir, WHAT ARE YOU DOING WALKING INTO MY APARTMENT?!

“Sorry, sorry, I . . . I thought I heard some water.” He tried to tell me that he was coming in to close my window, because he had looked through my other window – yes, HAD LOOKED THROUGH MY WINDOW, and noticed another window was open, so out of the pure kindness of his heart, was coming into my house without permission to close the window, because he was worried it might rain. 

First – it hasn’t rained here since November. Second – STILL NOT A REASON TO COME INTO SOMEONE’S HOME. Third – IF it rains in my house and gets my stuff wet, that is MY responsibility, not yours. 

In my head was a loop of the scratch of the key turning in my lock, and how easy it was for him and how this must mean he’s done it before, to steal some cash or smell my clothes or do gross things I dare not mention for fear of manifestation. 

I gave his fabricated and flimsy excuse a big “NOPE” and frog-marched him down the stairs to the landlord. Summoning courage from I do not know where, I banged on her door, and screamed for about ten minutes about how unacceptable this was, how creepy it was, how it went against everything she had promised us about security. All she could say was “oh, he should have knocked. Oh, I didn’t know he was going to do that.” She was far too cool about it all. She said “oh, he made a mistake.” 

Again. NOPE. 

So I had to clap in her face and yell different versions of “not good enough” and “this is not acceptable” with some choice words thrown in until the grounds guy cried a bit. The tears fueled me. I was shaking and angry and she was being awful so so so I just kept yelling and walked back up the stairs and into my house and onto my bed again. And burst into tears. 

It does not help that I live thousands of miles from home, in a developing country, and all of this was happening in a mix of English and Spanish and marinating in fear and anger. Nothing helps, really. It’s been a lonely and depressing and thankless two years here. Things keep happening (the school is a mess and cancer scares and spider bites and allergic reactions and guns in my class and military presence and students reacting from trauma and) and I wonder what the point of it all is. 

Since that afternoon, I’ve had nightmares almost every night of something in the room with me. My closet takes a different shape of scary every night. It’s hard to go to sleep and stay asleep. Sounds seem louder. I’m jumpy, irritable. I’m angry, so angry. Seconds away from crying all day, it feels. 9

The worst things didn’t happen that day; worse things have already happened to me, yet if i think about it too much, I start to just vibrate with rage. 

So many other women have similar (and worse) stories to share. While usually it’s comforting to feel less alone in a bad situation, it just makes my heart hurt for all of us. As one friend put it so well, “I always have to tell my husband that our daughter and I are living in a completely different reality of ‘safety’ than he can ever understand.” 

As a challenging twist of fate, weeks ago, knowing that my Spring Break coincided with the culmination of my Masters’ program and completing Parent/Teacher conferences, I splurged and booked four days alone in a beach casita to drink mimosas in a hammock, read nothing of substance, eat sandwiches, and watch the sunset. Sounds great, right? But now I am worried about . . . how “alone” being alone will be. Literally thousands of miles from anyone I know, in an area prone to all kinds of natural disasters and oh, Lord, what had I done? 

My logical brain reminds me that it is a safe town I have been to twice before (albeit with friends), there are stray animals we befriended that I long to see again (whom we have named Bee-sting, Hollander, and Sir), and I will read for pleasure alone for the first time in a year and a half. Also, there is a REALLY good sandwich shop. I think about this one Cuban a lot . . . there were tater tots as sides. 

I know it will be good for me to reclaim my fearlessness. My “I will fight you” -ness. I’m angry that someone deflated it. I have to remember that I am brave, a bad@ss, a trailblazer. Maybe I’m tearing up while I’m writing this, but that’s realization – talking to myself, writing to anyone reading, infusing power into these words.

So . . . obviously we go, right? It’s going to be a bit scary but . . . but we will punch fear right in the face. 

Update: She went. It was scary. There were still nightmares and loneliness. But it was pretty, and she had an aḉai bowl and two good sandwiches and four good sunsets and larger than life mimosas in a hammock to say “HEY we got a 4.0 on our Masters.”

Live life with no egrets, am I right? 

Oh, and that guy that came into my space? Yeah, he got fired.