You Won't Like Me When I'm Angsty,

I'm suddenly hyper aware of how I sometimes write these things in such a rush, and on a computer that doesn't have Grammarly watching for mistakes over my shoulder and it's starting to bother me...

When I get angsty, or passionate or generally riled up about something, punctuation gets missed, spelling is off, and unfortunately I commit the cardinal sin of not closing brackets around separate clauses. I know, it's really triggered. It's horrendous. My only excuse is that I don't realise when I'm doing it!!

Tonight I read back over the post on here that has been read the most times, and for one thing, I would like to apologise most sincerely for all of the errors, but for another, I recognised a passion within myself that is sometimes absent of late. It was both wonderful and heartbreaking to see because the girl that wrote that looks a lot stronger than the girl in the mirror today and that's a very hard reality to face, 

But then I have to remind myself of the conversation that I had with a work colleague today about Parkrun. Some people might want to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony, but I want to drag the entire world out of bed and to their local parks for 9am on a Saturday morning and get them to walk, jog or run, even if they don't do the full 5k.

Running is amazing exercise, is great for your mental health and the fresh air is good for you, too. You don't have to love running, you don't even have to like it, you can like seeing the same people week after week, watching them and yourself improve, seeing the community that has been created by some really amazing people. You could tail walk, or be the lead bike, or the photographer and help other people strive to achieve their goal, whether it be to run an ultra marathon or just trim a couple of inches off of their waist line. 

You can bring dogs and kids, even in pushchairs. People of all ages are welcomed and people will support you. Everyone had to find their starting line. It's getting people into parks too, which I hope makes people see the problem that litter causes and makes them clean up after themselves or others, but also, using that green space is a way of protecting it. Okay, having a few hundred runners thundering over sections of grass week on week might not be great for individual blades of grass, but we know that land is at a premium, so it's not too hard to believe parks could be downsized or removed entirely if they are seen to be unused. 

Basically, ParkRun is a healthy, free, family-friendly, fun experience and I can't really see any downside except perhaps the early alarm clock!

Why Do I Have To Write This,

Okay, first thing - I know I don't have to write the blog and I don't have to write about specific subjects, but my God this needs saying over and over and over again and I feel the need to say it. 

When I woke up this morning there was a really great post on my Facebook feed. It was about the way two women had supported each other when they were out at night and they felt they were in a dangerous situation.

I thought it was incredible that, despite being able to leave that situation sooner, the second woman stayed around long enough that she knew the first one, the one who wrote the post, was safe, too, because that is the world that we live in. Women need to be a community. Women need to have each other's backs. Now, that isn't to say that everybody else doesn't need that - different races, religions, sexualities, ages, and list goes on, suffer abuse or vulnerability simply because they left the house. Sometimes it happens before they leave the house. This story should be an inspirational look at community within a vulnerable group and in some ways be celebrated even though we should also be able to hold it up as an example and say that this is what society and rape culture pushes us to. 

Things went downhill really fast when I went on the fool's errand of looking at the comments section. In my total ignorance I was hoping for more similar stories, but what happened was idiots. Idiots are a fact of life, unfortunately, but that doesn't make them an easier cross to bear. 

The main issue seemed to be the idea that these two women have labeled the man who made them uncomfortable as dangerous. Maybe that's the word that the original poster used, I can't remember, but hell if that's the label in your mind then go with it, but I always think of it as that person is a risk. In your mind, you constantly do risk assessments, and where someone falls on that scale of risk assessment means a lot to you and really, unless you go out of your way to tell them where they sit, it shouldn't mean a whole lot to them for them to get offended by it. The only time it should mean a lot to them, is if they think their behavior is fine but they want to reassess so that they don't make the same error again and make someone else feel uncomfortable. This happens, but it's rare. 

So, we're risk-assessing and then we do this thing of either saying, green, everything's cool, or there's something we need to do about this situation to minimize or eliminate that risk. Either it's an amber situation, and you call someone and loudly tell them where you are, or you find someone to be your buddy, or it's a red situation, and you get the hell out of there by the nearest available safe route. You order an Angel Shot or Ask for Angela. You use the escape methods that society is oh so very slowly (painfully, painfully slowly) realizing the need for and you get out of that situation. The labeling of the other person is not what is important right then - the important thing is that YOU FEEL SAFE. And there are people that still don't get that. 

One of the comments and this really makes my blood boil, but one of the comments said, but he's not done anything. Oh, okay, so at one point am I allowed to feel unsafe? What point of him doing something is it acceptable for me to need help to get out of that situation? Is it when he puts his hands on me, whether he thinks it's friendly or not? Is it when he's following me, and I'm thinking, he's going to know where I live. He's going to realize I live alone. Or is it not until he's committed some sort of criminal activity and I'm suffering the consequences. I'm making this first person for a reason. This is always personal. 

How is it acceptable that even in a court of law, we can talk about the way we felt as part of a decision-making process in something as serious as Critical Incidents? We can talk about making a decision based on the information we had at the time, but we can't do that in day to day life? Yes, he's not done anything illegal yet, he's not physically put me in harm's way, but he's also not done anything to make me feel safe. Why should I implicitly trust this person when I feel unsafe and I know that it's likely that he could overpower me if he wanted to. The information I'm working off of might be vague, but whilst some commenters were crying, YOU HAVE NO REASON TO MISTRUST THIS MAN, part of me wanted to and did, and I'm not even sorry, scream back BUT I HAVE NO REASON TO TRUST HIM EITHER! There was a comparison to labeling your male family members as dangerous - SOMETIMES, THEY ARE. 

I'm lucky. The worst we have in my immediate family are some people that are really annoying, but some people are not so lucky. Whether that be the case or not, we should not be required to trust Joe Public because he's not done anything until the point he does. Feeling scared, or nervous or anxious is valid and if you see someone feeling like that you have a choice. I would hope that I try to always go the way of the second woman in this story and help that person to mitigate the risk that they feel, or would do something to make them feel safe. I would hope to always be that person, partly because people have done it for me, and I've seen situations where they haven't. Being overcautious is not a problem. If that's what we need to do to feel safe, why is it seen as one?