Some thoughts…

This is a real candid, personal entry. Just some thoughts and emotions I needed to vent somewhere..

I was mugged a few days ago. It was only 7pm, I was walking down the street to the bus stop headed for my weekly salsa class. I’ve walked this route often enough I could do it without thought in my sleep. I had my phone out, checking the bus times because they’re always 100% accurate and I *hate* the feeling of getting to the stop and seeing the bus just pulling away, that disappointment and frustration that washes over briefly as I watch it disappear down the street. Anyway, turns out that despite my neighborhood supposedly being very safe, walking around in any part of a major city alone with your phone out when it’s dark is a bad idea.. long story short after a minute or so I was on the ground with multiple bruises and 4 guys taking off the opposite direction with my phone and my bag. Not going into too much detail but I messaged a friend on my computer who called police; they showed up on my doorstep 5 minutes later to take a statement but I’m almost certainly never going to see my phone again.

I’m OK physically.. the bruises will heal, I’m using my old 3G for a few months, and yet.. the incident has forever changed me:

It’s changed my view of San Francisco. I used to walk around with the naivete of invincibility, almost. My perception was that yeah you hear about crime all the time but it’s never going to happen to me. SF isn’t that bad, I live in a great area. But at some point or another, it just might happen to you, and you become that statistic.. Be On Alert. It sucks. It absolutely SUCKS that you can’t even walk around your own neighborhood without taking the proper precautions but that’s how it goes.

It’s changed my view of people. When I lay in bed trying to sleep, I still get flashbacks of the incident. The most vivid image that comes to mind is this black guy in a dark baseball cap and baggy clothing, the yellow light of the street lamps overhead, telling me to hand over my phone while his buddies surround me. I still feel so much rage.. and vengeance. Like that feeling of how utterly helpless I was in that moment, and how I never want to feel that way again. If I were to let the emotions take over, I’d be grabbing a high caliber assault rifle and go all out Rambo-style hunting down groups of minorities. It sucks because my perception was that SF people are super friendly and I had nothing to worry about. It sucks because it directed my emotions, my hate, towards a particular race; every time I see a scruffy black guy my eyes narrow and my fists clench, I want to shout racial epithets and wail on him. And yet, I live with two African American women and they are the sweetest people ever.

It’s changed my view of myself. I’ve realized that the world isn’t all rosy and wonderful. There’s a lot of bad shit out there. Bad people. Good people in bad circumstances. But everyone in one way another, is only out for themselves. And that’s the way that I’ve got to be thinking. There are 3 types of people in this world: spectators that watch things happen, doers that make things happen, and the ignorant that pretend things don’t happen. I’ve been the latter for too long.

What’s interesting though.. is the role of emotions. Emotions don’t just go away, they have to be channeled somewhere, into some kind of action. For me, it’s spurred a lot of thought. And right now, stuff like brazilian jujitsu and learning/buying a gun are very real options. We’ll see though.. expect a 2012 goals entry to follow shortly.