Three Questions

I'm going to use some strong language in this post. If that's not okay with you, you should probably refrain from reading this one. I believe that strong language should be saved (notice I said "should," which does not mean that I necessarily adhere to this belief all the time) for strong situations, and I can at least assure you that this is one of those.

I don't have much to show you about our trip to Napoli (or Naples), Blue Capri, and Pompeii because we didn't stay there the whole time. We left early because we didn't feel safe. We were told that Napoli was an unsafe city. We were told that pickpockets and perverts ran rampant and wild. Usually this translates into "stay in the good part of town and no one gets hurt," but that wasn't the case.

On the bus getting from the train station to the airport, my professor had her camera stolen out of her bag. She looked down, saw the guy's hand in her bag, and started hitting his hand to try and get him away. He still got the camera. I got felt up on the bus, and I was lucky because someone else felt up my friend with the intention of getting under her skirt. Right after we got off the bus, our group (mostly female) got called cunts by the locals. Later that night, my friend almost got pickpocketed by a kid.

I'm young, but I'm not naive. Those are all things that can happen when you're out somewhere. They happen all the time, and this time, they happened to us. I'd already carried out the precautions: stuck my money on my body, carried a pickpocket-resistant purse (I just made up that term), didn't make too much eye contact with people.

And then the next day, while my friends are walking back from a day at the beach, a guy drives up on a motorcycle and tries to take her bag. He knocks her over and she gets dragged down the street until her purse breaks and he drives off.

I wasn't going to put that part in here. I was going to go through my pictures from Pompeii and mention that we left early but not provide any reason about it. Because why should I? Blogger tells me that the majority of my readers are in the US, across the ocean. I wasn't even there. Antonia and I had walked back a couple hours before from the island. And the reason I haven't been on here was because I was trying to figure out a way I could just move on, even in writing, and not pretend everything happened. It was hard, and that's when I realized that it wasn't the right thing for me to do. Suppressing the truth has gotten so many people in trouble in the past. But even worse, I considered staying silent. But if I'm silent, that guy wins. And so does everyone else who takes advantage of tourists or women or teenagers or people who look a certain way or talk a certain way.

I live my life convincing myself that the world is the most horrible place imaginable. Every stranger is a potential threat. Every situation is a worst-case scenario. Does that mean I live my life in constant fear? No. Because I'm here to live, and you can't do that if you're always looking over your shoulder. I've learned that. But if I can acknowledge the truth, if I can make peace with the fact that the majority of the world and my life is out of my control, if I can live aware knowing that my gender and my color and my culture and my language will always to a certain extent condemn me in the eyes of people I have never met...then I can live without unnecessary anger at God and the world and "those other people." Because all of the danger is danger we as a species created. We were in Napoli for less than seventy-two hours. Other people go through what we did for their whole lives, and it's much worse. Someone tried to take my friend's possessions, but she's still alive and healthy. Someone touched me without my permission, but he didn't break me. I keep telling myself that we were lucky it wasn't worse.

But there's a second question here, and if you're reading this, you've already asked it. Because after you ask yourself Why and you answer it with That's just the way it is, there's a second question. I've been ignoring it, because I've rationalized the first question by essentially saying that there is no answer, but then that throws you in the dangerous realm of I Let Everyone and Everything Walk Over Me Land, and I don't want to go there.

Should things be this way?

See, that's an easy one. No one has to rationalize their way through that one or lose sleep or cry or break things over that one. The answer is no. That's just the way it is was the crappy half-ass answer you got from your parents when you were a kid, and I think you'll all agree that it hasn't gained any strength over time.

That was easy. Let's move on to the third question: what do we do about it?

That's only half-rhetorical, because I'm not entirely sure myself. You individually will make almost no impact. And that's usually where we call it quits. Do we blame the other people? Do we play that awesome game called If Only? That game got played after everything happened in Napoli. If our teachers had been there...if we'd been walking in a group...if we hadn't walked so close to the street...if more boys had been there...if we had been watching more closely...

Blame's what started the mess in the first place. I don't have to tell you that.

Maybe that's where we go from here. Some of you reading this have made stopping discrimination and violence the focus of your lives. Maybe that's where you're needed. Others of us are needed somewhere else. But can we stop the blame? Can we think a little more about things that come out of our mouths? Can we remember that people are never, never, ever to be looked at as objects?

I've been constantly running this whole trip. I've constantly felt like I was in competition or like I wasn't doing enough or I wasn't seeing enough. I focus less and less on the human aspects of our trip with every blog post I make. I know this. But I know that this, the experience I had in Napoli, will be the most important lesson I carry away from here. And what do you know? It's one I've learned before, again and again, a thousand times.

On our first day here, TerTer said that repetition was the mother of learning.

Last week, Hutch and Sebass were talking, and she asked him who they were kidding, we weren't adults, we were still kids. And he looked at her and said, "But you are adults. Of course you are."

That has never been so painfully realistic.