Ladies!!! Can we start taking care of ourselves a little?

Okay, so heres the thing, I told myself that I would only do 3-4 blogs a week but here I am on what? 4 within the last two days? lol I mean, I don't want to seem like I don't have a life but I feel like when something speaks to you, you just have to talk about it. I have a feeling that this is going to be long, so if you don't like that id suggest backing out and saving it for later or maybe even reading this in segments. For all I know it may not even be that long but ive got a lot of thoughts so....you never know.

As I'm typing this I'm sitting on my bed, laptop in my lap, windows open so I can feel the cool breeze and listen to the birds outside, I'm calm but I'm only slightly relaxed and battling between being shook up or creeped out because when I headed home from Walmart today, I was followed home. See, I know what half of you are thinking, "how do you know that you were followed home? Are you sure this isn't you overreacting?" First off, yes I'm sure and second, NO I'm not overreacting. I left the store with the girls in the back of the Jeep, minding my own, when about 2 miles from home or so I look into my rearview mirror and see a man, arm hanging out of his white truck almost tailgating me. I immediately become hyperaware as I call it, and I turn down a road that's maybe a few blocks from my house and he turns down it as well, I'm trying to just talk myself out of it and think "its a small town, people live down here...not a big deal" I keep driving and he keeps following, so I turned down another road. (keep in mind I know where I am and where these roads lead...absolutely NEVER drive down and unfamiliar road and make sure to drive the opposite direction of your house...but not too far.) Then I remembered seeing a post somewhere about If you feel like youre being followed, make 4 left (or right) turns and if they follow you all four times (a square) then youre being followed. So I made a right turn...he followed, I made another right turn....he followed, and so I went to go make another right turn BUT I turned on my left turn signal this time (as did he).So, despite having my left signal on, I turned right...and he followed. So I sped up turned on my right turn signal and made my last right turn (which would put us right back where we started). he turned on his turn signal to follow me but then changed his mind and quite literally gunned it and sped off. I didn't know what else to do so I just pulled into a church parking lot and almost cried. if he had followed me on my last turn I would have called the cops but now I'm paranoid to even leave. Like I was with my kids, alone, just us and I just don't know what I would have done. I mean, would the cops just have kept me on the phone and followed me around? and what did he want? I just don't even want to think about it.

Once I got home and locked my doors, I realized this whole experience literally got my mind racing and thinking....we as women are literally SO vulnerable. I'm not saying we cant stand up for ourselves or hold our ground, that's not what I'm saying. But we as women are typically smaller in height, weight, and build to other people...men and other women included, a lot of us don't know the first thing when it comes to self defense or how to protect ourselves. Be honest here....how many of you know how to lock, load, and fire a gun? If you do then youre seriously a badass....but how good is your aim? Or how many of you have a taser? is it charged? What I'm saying is things may literally never happen to you, but it might and we're just living our lives like the world isn't a horrible place and women aren't getting assaulted and abducted day in and day out. While this stuff may NEVER happen to you, by not having something to protect yourself, youre quite literally putting your safety in everyone elses hands and youre essentially just trusting strangers not to assault, abduct, and murder you. I don't know about you guys but I don't like the idea of that. Now, I know how to load and fire a gun and ive been to the range a few times. With that being said, my aim isn't great, ive got horrendous depth perception and I as a whole do not trust myself with a gun to carry on a day to day basis. Ive got bad anxiety and I just don't want to worry about wondering if ive turned the safety on....I just get overwhelmed thinking about it. With that being said I do carry a taser that is known to burn skin even through a leather jacket, so I at least have SOMETHING to make me feel/keep me safe. I'm not saying this stuff to scare you, I'm saying it because we women openly put ourselves out there and just "trust" nothing bad is going to happen to us.

Now listen, I'm going to tread wisely here because if a feminist comes across this blog I'm sure all hell will break lose. But, we as a gender literally put ourselves in danger repeatedly and don't even bat an eyelash. Get into cars with strangers? Sure. Go on walks late at night by ourselves? Sounds great. Go to peoples houses alone when we've only met once? okay. Getting rip roaring drunk at a party surrounded by hundreds of people you've never met. wow! what fun....and my favorite that seems the most innocent..getting into your dates car to go out to eat...doesn't seem that bad does it? but if you've never met him, how safe is that exactly? not very. We quite literally are living our lives like its still 1950 and everyone is everyones friend, and that's the furthest from the truth. I feel like we have more racism, sexism, and violence than we've had in a long time. We just need to stop making irresponsible choices that could potentially put us in danger.

*I am by no means even remotely suggesting that any murder, assault, abduction, etc is EVER the victims fault, I'm just saying we aren't being proactive in protecting ourselves and were literally trusting random strangers to not attack us*

My husband always makes fun of me because I'm "super anxious" and "overly paranoid" because I wont go to the gas station, or the store after the sun sets...and my first thought always is..."well this super anxious and paranoid person hasn't gotten assaulted or murdered has she?" unlike my friend who went to Walmart at 11pm over the winter and almost got abducted in the parking lot by three guys 5 minutes from my house. Apparently that's a "thing" in this small town in Indiana and they're "seeing it more and more" according to the cops when she talked to them...and don't even get me started on the group of people "selling" children's books who were coming to houses in my county and the next county over, trying to knock parents out and take their kids for a sex traffic ring.

You guys, its out there...the world is dangerous...you can trust NO ONE! Start being proactive in your own safety and even if you don't feel safe with guns, get a taser...stop setting your drinks down at bars, stop letting random men bring you drinks at the bar, stop leaving your house drunk, stop going to places where you don't know the person and resort back to what your momma taught you and DONT GET INTO CARS WITH STRANGERS.

#women #safety #taser #proactive #strong #smart