Fear & Vigilance by J. Kathryn Fulton

J. Kathryn Fulton

J. Kathryn Fulton is a writer and educator whose writing often explores identity and trauma and the intersection of the two. She is passionate about giving voice to underrepresented populations, identities, and experiences and seeks to further this work through both her teaching and writing.

Fulton holds an MA in Literature from George Mason University and is pursuing an MFA in Creative Nonfiction at the Naslund-Mann Graduate School of Writing at Spalding University.

Fear & Vigilance

I grew up well versed in fear and a handful of vigilant safety strategies. My grandmother told the story of how she walked into the bathroom of a public library and a man was in the stall and started to grab her. “If it wasn’t for that lady that came in the bathroom just then, who knows what would have happened,” she said each time she told the story. She would shake her head as she rubbed her arm and looked off into the memory before she gripped her teacup and took another sip of tea. “It was terrifying.” When I first heard the story as an eleven or twelve-year-old on my first solo weekend visit to my grandparents’, I’m sure I was wide-eyed, nodding, unsure of what to say. In subsequent retellings, I would nod and vocalize my agreement about the terrifying experience, all while thinking about how I would check stalls if I was ever alone and entered a restroom that appeared to be empty. Or I could always go with someone. Or I could avoid using public restrooms.

 My mother told the story of how she got back to her car after a college class that let out late at night, and a man approached her. A car pulled into the lot, and the man ran off. “If it wasn’t for that couple pulling into the parking lot just then, I don’t know what would have happened,” my mother said every time. “I’m so thankful they needed directions and saw me.” When I first heard this story as a preteen, my wide eyes mirrored my mothers. I thought of ways I could stay safe, knowing I would not be able to avoid the dark, or walking to my car alone, or walking to my car in the dark.

The buddy system grew to include keys between fingers and hurried steps to the car and checking behind back seats once I had the freedom of a driver’s license. On a college visit, the leader of our tour shared information about campus safety, and I learned that, when standing at a blue emergency light, you could see at least one more, so you could, theoretically, run from one to the next, hitting each call button along the way if you needed to keep moving. Horrifying to think that you might be in a scenario that necessitated running along a line of emergency blue light call boxes, but at the time, it seemed to be an option, the exit sign you look for. I had my established, practiced safeguards, and now there was this additional layer of safety to protect against someone who might be lurking in the shadows.

The blue lights did not save me. 

The stories and warnings from my grandmother and mother did not protect me. 

Keys between my fingers would not have defended me. There were no back seats to look behind. I was on alert for the wrong things in the wrong places. I should have looked further behind what appeared to be friendship, should have looked behind smiles and shared interests. Could I have seen intentions?

In a dorm room with a small group I thought I knew well enough, I had let down my guard. We had subs and fountain drinks from Subway and started a movie that May evening. Light from a streetlamp and a blue emergency light across from the building reflected on the window and TV, and someone adjusted the blinds. At some point the next day, I realized I didn’t remember falling asleep the previous night or waking up that morning. Later, I realized I didn’t remember the movie we had watched. I brushed these things off as strange, attributing it to exhaustion from my ever-full schedule and the end of the semester. I went through that day in a haze, studied for finals, somehow made it through exam week. My body could not brush these things off, of course. Out of an instinctive fear I did not understand and a need for safety I could no longer find there, I left that school after the following year. My body whispered, then spoke, then screamed at me as I fell into a state of fear and hypervigilance I could not explain for twenty years.

I tell the story of how I learned and developed some safety strategies growing up, but I was also naïve and trusting. I tell the story of how you do not need to be drinking alcohol to have your drink drugged, and not all assaults leave victims bloody and bruised, but the body still remembers, and the mind is still traumatized. There was no one to rescue me “ just then.” I understand the ripple effects of what happens when “who knows what would have happened” does, in fact, happen. It has been terrifying.