I Don’t Want to Be Afraid
I spent so much of my life in fear…I didn’t want to live like that, anymore
One of the biggest points of contention in my last relationship was that my partner insisted on carrying a loaded gun with him wherever he went — to the grocery store, to the movie theater, on a romantic date. Everywhere. He did it legally — he had a license to carry a concealed weapon — but I felt uneasy and sometimes downright afraid knowing that a gun was strapped to his belt right there in the produce department.
Why? I would ask him. Why do you need to carry that thing everywhere?
His answer was very simple. He told me he was terrified he was going to be mugged someday, maybe attacked and killed, and having that gun made him feel safe.
But here’s the thing: we didn’t live in Oakland or New York City or Boston. We lived in a rural town in the west where crime rates are very low. Having lived in the suburbs of Los Angeles and Albuquerque, I could not comprehend his fear. In this town, the likelihood of a white, conservative, Christian, cis-gendered male getting victimized in any way is basically nil.
However, as I thought about it over the course of our relationship, I realized I had felt that kind of fear.
