I'm walking home from work and it's been a long 5 hour shift. I work part time as a receptionist at a guest house but the title encompasses far more than just sitting behind a desk and answering the phone.
I not only am partially housekeeping but also the therapist, listener, and general fix it in the building during my shift, which is slightly harder when three of my work colleagues schedule their holidays within the same week, leaving my boss to scramble to cover them and me to take on back to back shifts.
You can get paid to do a job but the value in it might not necessarily be found on your bank statement.
Given my ongoing journey to trying to get better mental and physical health I knew I was pushing it taking them on and tried to pace myself for the five day straight work week.
Thankfully, I survived it and on the first evening of the return to my regular shift (during our three day heat wave) I felt a bit better on my walk home.
I try to leave my work at work, but when you're dealing with people and you're the kind of person that wants the best for people who haven't had the best of luck you sometimes end up carrying that shit with you until you can watch it all go down the drain of the hot bath you have.
I try and let it go as I walk back home, breathing and listening to music, eyes wide open to the light and shadows around me. I'm almost home when a large white Range Rover zooms past me on the road. I don't give it another thought, it's just another stranger in a hurry to get nowhere on an empty road. I continue my walk along when suddenly I feel something inside my shoe. I get to a corner near a streetlamp by some residential homes. My instincts tell me not to stop as I see the white Range Rover, that had turned around and had stopped beside the houses.
I pull my little polka-dotted shopping trolley (which has all my work stuff in it) behind me and prepare to walk past when the male driver calls out from his open widow. "Excuse me, do you know where Stockport Road is?"
I get closer but leave a two meter gap between myself and the car. I don't think I just respond "You're literally two streets away, turn around and when you get to the end of the street turn right, then when you get to the lights at the end Stockport road is the road in front of you."
My brain must be malfunctioning, it's not screaming "STRANGER DANGER" but it's clocked the fact the car looks brand new, and there are no other occupants in the car with the male driver. It's 11pm at night and he's probably got a smart phone that works perfectly, but my first response is to help out and give directions.
He asks me how old I am and I tell him I just celebrated my 31st. He says I don't look it, that I'm too pretty. I thank him while laughing and rolling my eyes. He says he's 30 and asks if I have a boyfriend. I reply yes. He asks me how long we've been together. I tell him 9 months. He asks if everything's good to which I smile and say everything's fantastic.
Now, I think it's crucial for me to point out two things here. 1) this was during our 3 day heat wave where it was still 20° C outside at night and we were all sweating buckets so my outfit was a summer dress that went down to my ankles and the top half was basically a layered tank top, my shoulders and arms were the only thing really showing, and of course I had my staple butterflies in my afro, very summery but professional, not sexy at all and it the dark I probably could have passed for some church girl going home from Sunday School after stopping off at ASDA to get some roast chicken (I may have left the South but the stereotype image stayed with me). And 2) I have my little shopping trolley with me, I know I made this point before but it's important you remember that fact when I tell you what he says to me next.
"So, you doing any business tonight?"
"Business? I don't understand what you mean?" I do, but I want the filthy bastard to say it. At this point my brain is going what the fuck? what the fuck? what the fuck? He thinks I'm a prostitute.....dressed like this and with my granny trolley? What the fuck? With my fucking granny trolley????!!!!!! (no offence to prostitutes but last time I checked a granny trolley wasn't a part of the usual get up of walking the streets.)
"Any business, you working tonight?"
I laugh as I start to turn away, I repeat my directions and say "Good luck with finding your way tonight." And before I can walk away he says "Are you sure you don't want a piece of this?" And as soon as he says that my eyes glance down from his eyes for a nanosecond in absolute horror as the realization dawns on my that for probably the entire time he's been talking to me he's been wanking. I'm glad that thanks to the distance from which I was standing I pretty much only saw a shadow but I went into shock and started laughing out loud (laughing is how my body reacts to traumatic shit) and just start saying repeatedly "Oh my God, oh my fucking God." as I walk away. I'm three minutes away from home but my body is going numb so I angrily stomp the rest of the way home. I call my boyfriend, but he doesn't pick up, so I call my adoptive mum Bill, because I need to vent.
I get home and I'm not sure if I want to cry or be sick. People get their kicks in different ways and I'm not one to shame anyone unless they want to be. But it had been a long day and I felt violated somehow but also mad at myself. I should have kept on walking. But then I think of the women I saw walking alone as I walked away and he drove off at full speed. If he hadn't stopped and talked to me, it might have been her that he did that to. And what if she'd been through worse and that triggers her and she never wants to step outside her front door again?
I can feel my mum's voice saying "At least Manchester's interesting." And later, on after venting to Bill and my boyfriend I try to see the funny side. I don't know why I feel hurt and numb, it's not like he touched me or anything but then my brain clicks, no he just tried to violate your mental inner peace, so yeah you feel sick. But then I remember a key from a meditation I used to practice eons ago, that essentially we choose who we allow to disrupt our inner peace, that when it gets attacked or threatened you raise your internal frequency, you pull out the joy, remember the good times, the stuff that make you laugh, and you breathe.
And I breathe, I think about Bill and their coming out celebration, celebrating my first new year with my boyfriend, passing my function skills level 2 exams at college, getting my first job, getting two kittens and a bunch of other unplanned and planned events I've hurdled through and in the end seeing a wanker in the dark on my walk home isn't the worst thing that's ever happened to me.....but it's definitely one of the funniest.
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