Security
My bike got stolen last week. I had left it in my garage, not knowing that my easily-distracted husband was going to run out to the grocery store and forget to close the garage door. An hour later he came home, and it was gone.
It was brand new, not even three weeks old. I had spent hours researching different models online, looking for one that was light enough for me to carry up and down stairs and suitable for commuting and weekend riding. It being pretty didn’t hurt, either. I went to the bike shop, took test rides, and probably spent too much money on rechargeable lights and accessories.
As soon as my husband ran into the house to tell me it was gone, my first thought was I should have known this would happen. I should have known that there were bike thieves roaming the alleys in every neighborhood in Chicago looking to make a quick sale. I should have known that my husband would eventually leave the garage door open, and I needed to lock it up or find a safer place to keep it. I should have put it on our renters insurance and registered the serial number with the police as soon as I could (so I could report it stolen), rather than putting it off for another day. I should have known.
And here’s the thing. I know that the person who is at fault isn’t me, or even my husband. The person at fault is the thief, but in a world where I can’t hold him accountable, knowing that doesn’t change the situation. It gives me anxiety when I think too much about how much of my life is completely out of my control, in the hands of people who may or may not care about how their actions affect me.
It’s so rage inducing to live in a city where people are roaming the alleys looking for unlocked garages. As a bike owner, I already knew that you can’t make a mistake even once, because someone is always watching.
It especially infuriates me when I think about how many hours of every day I spend worried about the feelings of other people. I worry about taking up too much space on public transportation. I worry about sending an email before I have re-read it eight times to make sure I have been appropriately considerate of someone else’s feelings, something which I realized in adulthood that I have been conditioned to do, largely because I am a woman.
I worry about other people to a fault. I have great difficulty asking others for help, because I’m afraid of being a burden. I go to extreme lengths to avoid using the bathroom on airplanes, mostly because I am terrified of asking strangers to move out of my way. Some days I move through the world feeling like I am constantly in the way.
For this reason, I just can’t empathize with all the people who don’t care if they hurt me, or who aren’t thinking about me at all. I can’t empathize with people who, in their quest to make $100 don’t even think about the time and the frustration and the $500 I would spend replacing my bike. It makes me feel vulnerable to think that these people exist, and in considerable numbers. I have had recurring fantasies about using another bike to lure them back to the scene of the crime, and then slashing their tires. Or chasing them with a can of pepper spray. My complete and total lack of empathy makes violence feel so appealing.
My parents have a house in the suburbs. Theirs is a fairly quiet neighborhood that experienced a population boom during the white flight of the 1950’s. Over time it has gotten more diverse around the edges, but it has mostly safe, and mostly white. My dad has lived in the same neighborhood his entire life.
My childhood was pretty uneventful as far as crime goes. No break-ins, no vandalism, no robberies. I often forgot to lock my door. Growing up there, it’s no wonder it never occurred to me to lock up my bike in my own garage.
And yet in recent years, my parents have installed a home security system. They built a tall privacy fence around their back yard. My dad has a phone app that monitors all our doors and windows. We were headed out to eat recently, and as we were pulling out of the driveway my dad remembered he forgot to set the security system. “Dad, we’re going to be gone for one hour”, I said. “Well, you wouldn’t want this to be the one time that something goes wrong”, he replied. I sighed and rolled my eyes.
But yet I feel this on a deep level sometimes. If something goes wrong and I didn’t do everything in my power to prevent it, no matter how expensive or extreme, it was my own fault. Maybe if I just try hard enough, I can keep everything in my control.
Our desire for security leads us to build walls. Literally. We have grown to fear outsiders, because there is a chance they may want to harm us. So we build border walls, we put up privacy fences, we move to “safer” communities to be with people who look and act a little more like us.
As a woman, and especially as one who was living in another country, I have gotten used to clutching my keys while walking home at night, and keeping my whistle handy just in case I need to call for help. Fortunately, I have never had to find out whether this system actually works. My sneaking suspicion is that this strategy would do very little in the case of an actual threat, but it makes me feel better all the same.
The hard truth is that the world isn’t safe. Not for our bodies, not for our money and our possessions, not for our feelings. There are things we can do to protect ourselves, and to feel less vulnerable. But none of us are immune 100% of the time.
And sometimes the hardest thing to do is to keep showing up anyway. To take risks, to hold on to valuable things that we love even knowing that they might be taken away from us at some point. To talk to our neighbors instead of hiding inside our houses or building a giant fence. To be wise, but also consent to living in a world where we’re never truly safe.
