Just after sunset

Short blurb to get the bloggin' mojo back, but

As a little Xands, I was quite afraid of the dark. That's not so abnormal, neither is my paranoia about checking under my bed nightly and not having limbs hanging off the edge.

...what?

Well anyway, when I was a wee one I rarely had a reason to actually be afraid, except for boogeymen and shit. Now, of course, I can't much stand the light but I actually learned there are very good reasons to be afraid of the dark.

I try to live a life without fear--well, MUCH fear. I wondered a few minutes ago why I tend to get irate when Danzy talks about his ability to just flounce about well after dark whether it's going to work or walking...on Bourbon St in New Orleans (see his blog for details). Not really upset but just annoyed. Maybe jealous that he has a job. Maybe mad that he keeps wasting my limited texts so flippantly and I have to pay my own verizon bill now.

I wonder why I can't stand being out past, oh, 7 or 8. It dawned on my a few moments ago that, maybe, maybe I'm afraid.

Afraid of violence. Afraid of being killed or lost or raped.

My campus so happens to have a low crime rate, but that's only reported crimes. If all crimes got reported, well...

I may be afraid. It's not that those bad things can't happen to men, they do. But being a girl, you know, puts me at a severe disadvantage in life, which is sad. As masculine as I like to be it freaks me right out, it doesn't help that I lived in a freaking drug neighborhood that nearly fecking killed me. You learn those instincts and they don't go away. I don't trust the men, the, ah, lighter complected men that feel it's their right to tell me ____, as in the racism talks we often find ourselves having. The reasons I've excused myself from the company of many of my former associates. Who's to say they won't physically try to put me in my place.

You might say it's a healthy paranoia, I beg to differ. I wish I could just...stroll along Bourbon St without having to clutch my cell phone and look around every corner extra hard because you just never know. I wish a lot of things too though.