Complaining that my fear is making your dating life harder is like complaining about a gnat in your hair while the lion next to you eats someone alive

I grew up with a stepfather who sexualized children. He didn’t abuse me, but I learned, from an early age, what life is like when you’re always having to check if the curtains are closed. Nevertheless, I persisted in trusting all men.

By the age of 20, A threatened to hit me with a closed fist. I continued to trust men. He hadn’t actually hit me, after all. By the age of 21, B had already forced himself on me. I insisted these were rare occurrences, and that they wouldn’t happen again. In the same breath, I admonished myself for believing I was safe in the world. I swore that next time, I would magically work out who was a rapist and who was not.

At 27, C raped me because I had, nevertheless, persisted with my trust. This time I swore that I was better at telling the predators from the normals, so I felt safe in the world. A year later, my capacity to tell the difference between predators and normals was tested.

It failed. This time, D tried to strangle me to death. I’m alive because he was small and drunk, and because I fought like a motherfucker.

I wished I’d never trusted him, but you can’t live life backwards. You must live with the trauma your trust wreaks.

Everything went dark after that. I went through more trauma than I knew how to bear for 20 years. Don’t skip over that number. Roll it around in your head. Think about your last 20 years. Consider how very long that is when you’re trying desperately to survive.

Nevertheless, I persisted in allowing men into my home. At 30, E tried to rape me.

F violated my consent. Then he posted revenge porn.

I stopped persisting after that. I began vetting the men I allowed into my life. I stopped handing out my address like candy. I distrusted all men until they had proven themselves worthy of it. I haven’t been in close quarters with a predator for eight years.

I will not apologise for that. It takes a lot of decades for a woman to reach this point of distrust. We must be raped, harassed, and threatened for years before we realise that persisting will eventually get us killed.

Or worse, because yes, there are worse things than being murdered.

Over the last five years, I’ve noticed that I’m not alone in my experience, and that women all over the world have had enough. We are exhausted. We are angry. Some of us are even writing off heterosexual relationships entirely. We have grown tired of persisting.

If this inconveniences your dating life, I will still persist.

If this makes you feel attacked, I will still persist.

If it makes you uncomfortable to see frightened women in the street, I will still persist.

I will persist because my life has given me no other options. I didn’t reach this point easily. It took 40 years to get here—40 years to learn what it takes to stay safe in the world. If you haven’t shared those 40 years, if you don’t know what it’s like to face predators for that many decades, I am still. Not. Fucking. Sorry.

Complaining that my fear is making your dating life harder is like complaining about a gnat in your hair while the lion next to you eats someone alive.

And after all of this time, I don’t care about your gnat.

For the first time, I can say that comfortably.

I’m sorry that your feelings are hurt, but the next predator will kill me. I won’t survive another. You, stranger, are not my priority.