Another walk

Went walking again. It was a strange experience, I must say. Nobody outside, really, for obvious reasons. Just cars passing over wet asphalt, the occasional stranger walking their dog, and me and my brother.

The sky today is a pale grey, not quite as bright as the sort of eye-hurting white you sometimes get. The ground seems damp, but I'm not sure, because it wasn't wet enough to get into my boots while I walked. The grass is flat and colorless. (In fact, everything outside today seems like it's had the color drained from it.) The trees are all dead, stark black entanglements of branches against the pale lifelessness of everything else. The air is chilly, the kind that isn't enough for snow or ice but still manages to get under your clothes, even if you wear layers.

It's not what I'd call a nice day out, but the walk was a welcome change from being cooped up inside.

 

Honestly, I'm genuinely worried I might develop carpal tunnel if I keep playing Minecraft all day.

Winter walk

My brother and I went out for a walk today. It was snowy, but we wore coats and all that, so I didn't mind. I just needed an excuse to get out of the house, now that school's been moved to online-only, and he felt the same way.

"So, you said you picked out presents for everyone?" he asked.

"Yeah, I've picked out presents for you and Mom, but I haven't ordered them yet. I feel better about those ones than the one I got for Dad."

"What'd you get him?" he asked.

"Catan."

 

He glanced behind us. I looked back too.

There was a man standing there in a black jacket. He didn't look at all cold. He just stood there, staring at me.

My brother laughed. "I was looking behind me to make sure Dad wasn't there," he said.

I would've found it funny too, if it weren't for the man standing behind us. Something about the way he stared at me really freaked me out.

"So, you want to go around the block again?" he asked.

"Um, no thanks," I said, shaking my head.

As we walked back to our house, he said, "It's always really awkward when someone's walking behind you, even though you know they're not following you or whatever."

I nodded, but I didn't say anything.

Mom was surprised when we walked in.

"Where were you?" she asked.

"We were just out for a walk," my brother said.

"Wow. In this weather?"

"We had coats on," I said.

"All right," Mom said, which, going by the tone of her voice, was in lieu of saying "Okay, weirdos."

I didn't bring up the man in the jacket to either of them.

Work

College is stressful. Not the classes, the assignments. I have too much work to do in a week for me to do my assignments and still do what I want to do, like reading and writing and playing video games. But if I don't do anything I actually want to do, I end up too tired and drained to do my assignments.

So I'm basically fucked one way or another.

Dumbass

I'm a dumbass. The reason I kept having to take really long walks home?

I was using my phone's map app to give me directions.

I forgot to select walking directions.

It didn't let me take the much faster route directly through campus because it thought I could only take roads, not streets.

It thought I was a fucking car.

College

I don't drive. I hate driving a car. It feels like a giant bullet I can only barely control. So instead, I walk to and from campus every day- I live at my parents' place, maybe twenty minutes away on foot.

 

Being a pedestrian feels like trespassing. It feels like modern life is designed for cars instead of people. I always have to look both ways three times each before I run across a crosswalk, not wanting to hold up the cars that truly own the city. As someone who's not especially athletic (or in-shape, for that matter), that can be a bit exhausting to do too often in a short timespan.

 

As I'm writing this, I'm sitting on the grass next to a sidewalk, catching my breath and listening to music. I'm not sitting on a bench, because that would be too damn convenient.

Another thing I don't like about walking is the people.

 

...That sounds bad. What I mean by that is that I have social anxiety, so my brain will interpret basically any interaction with strangers as something I have to navigate incredibly carefully to avoid making these random people hate me, or something. It's irrational, but that's just how it is.

When I hear people laugh, I think they're laughing at me. When I hear people talk, I think they're talking to me, and I get startled. When I happen to share a route with someone, I'm worried they think I'm following them.

That last one really isn't helped by being a trans girl. There's so much toxicity and hatred towards trans people, and when it comes to being a trans woman, that toxicity and hatred is channeled into the stereotype that we're all perverts who want to spy on "real women." As if I'm interested in transphobes anyways. No fucking thanks.

The one thing that's worse is the fear that someone else is stalking me. I haven't actually dealt with stalkers before, thankfully, but I keep having this worry- maybe rational, maybe not- that someone is following me when I'm walking home.

Hi

My name's Tally. I'm a college freshman. This blog is going to be a private place for me to vent and talk about my personal life and that kind of thing, so... yeah, expect things to be angsty, personal, and/or political. (And probably sweary.)