I was followed to work this morning.
My work shift starts before 6am, I’ve never had a problem walking the already busy streets of DC when its dark, especially when most of the time i’m skateboarding. I actually used to feel pretty safe because I’d see Secret Service or the DC police around all the time. I know my father and roommates have voiced their strong dismay in walking by myself at these hours, but i live close enough to work where I don’t need a car, and i’m the one opening the shop, I can’t walk with a coworker, there is only three of us.
Anyways, my morning started off usual. I grabbed my board, book bag, and started my eight block trek to work. Everything was fine until I got around the corner, then all of a sudden a strange man started following me down my same normal path. I figured I was just being paranoid, I live in DC where there are tons of commuters and theres a metro on every corner. But instead of just blowing it off, I decided to take a different route to work instead of my normal, just in case this was a strange guy following me, I didn’t want him to know where I worked let alone my normal route to get there. I’ve seen way too many thriller movies to fall victim to one of their tricks.
After walking another block, the guy was still there. I did a quick glance back when I was pretending to look both ways before crossing a street, he halted in his steps for a few seconds and proceeded to continue walking after I crossed the road. Okay, this guy was definitely following me. This is where I started to panic.
I was still in a pretty open area where if I screamed, somebody would take notice and come out. I used this opportunity to call my father and talk to his voicemail, I described the guy that was following me and told him my intended route that I was going and what my plan was. I told myself, “one more block and if he still is following me, we’re running.” Another block, the guy is still behind me and closing in the gap between us. I instantly took off running as fast I could down two streets to a diner that I knew police frequent at. I don’t think I ran that fast in my life, I didn’t even want to look back to see if he was running after me.
Once I got to the diner out of breath and panicking, I told my story to one of the officers in the diner who was having his morning coffee and asked if he could walk me to work. He kindly told me to hop in his cruiser and he’d drop me off and send out a warning to other police out this morning that there was a strange man (with the description I told him) lurking about on the streets. I was completely on edge. The officer walked me into my shop and stayed around for an hour just to make sure I was fine, I was incredibly thankful for his concern. He told me he has a daughter around my age and he hopes that she’d do the exact same thing I did.
You don’t think about these things when they actually happen to you. You hear peoples experiences and tell them easy ways to escape an attack or prevent one, but once you actually go through it for yourself, you realize its not actually easy at all. You think to yourself, who the hell would try and kidnap me? Or rob me? Or want to cause me bodily harm? Those people are out there i’m afraid. Just be safe and always be alert, especially if you’re like me, someone who walks alone to work at dark hours. Always keep someone informed of your whereabouts and know your surroundings. I don’t even want to think about what would have happened if I talked myself out of thinking this guy who was following me for three blocks already wasn’t actually following me. It’s absolutely terrifying.
