PTSD (or something)

Yesterday I was sitting at my desk, willing the time to hurry up a little, when all of a sudden there was a loud noise outside. I realised it was someone hooting. Incessantly. Students were running past the shop and there was a panic in the air. My first thought was that there had been an accident. But we ran outside and panicked students were shouting something about a hijacking.

I felt the adrenalin rush through my veins and my heart started beating faster and faster. We found out a few minutes later that a girl had been speaking on her cell phone and a guy had come up behind her and just grabbed her cell phone out of her hand. He’d sped off in a red car.

The girl was bordering on hysterical. She was crying and crying, she couldn’t even remember her own cell phone number. I wanted to hug her and tell her that I know exactly how she feels*. We were very nearly standing in the spot where I was hijacked.

At that moment (minutes after the crime) you just feel so overwhelmed. You just want to cry and cry. Partly because you’re so relieved that nothing worse happened, but mostly because you feel violated. Someone has come into your personal, intimate, private space and has violated your sense of security, and has done something that has stripped you of your power. Completely. You feel drained and vulnerable. The crime fills your thoughts – you can think of nothing else, and you replay it in your mind, over and over again.

The criminals think it’s just a cell phone that they’re stealing. But it’s so much more than that. For the next few months (sometimes even years) this girl (and others like her; me!) will be afraid to walk around by herself – anywhere. She will be scared to speak on her cell phone. She will be weary of all men (suspicious-looking or not). She’ll probably be scared of everyone for a while.

Only after months will she be able to walk on campus feeling reasonably safe again. And every time another crime happens in this road, she will relive her terrible experience. This is a scar that stays forever.

*I didn’t though, fearing that she might not be receptive to some random stranger who supposedly knows how she feels.