When A “Friend” Is Scared of You For Being What You Can’t Help Be

The longest minute of my life? The day a person I consider a friend told me that, the day she met me, she was initially scared of me.

When she said that, I was taken aback by it. This is coming from the same person who, on the very day I met her, seemingly sprouted from the pavement before me as I walked out of a film center in midtown Manhattan.

“Are you part of the Sherlock BBC LiveJournal meet-up?” she asked in a high-pitched voice.

“No,” was my only reply. If anything, she creeped me out. She’s short and slender compared to my tall bigness. But I can’t fault her, for she wasn’t even living in NY much less knew the custom to not ‘surprise’ a New Yorker like that.

But when she relayed her fear of me to me, it was at a tea party held by a Tumblr-famous fan-artist at 221B Con, a small, Sherlock Holmes-based convention held in Atlanta. I was there to have a good time and some tea as well as meet new people as well as anyone I’d met on Tumblr and/or at Sherlock-based meetups back in NYC.

Instead, after hearing the sentiment, I couldn’t help but think about what I’d heard from this “friend”. It felt weird, especially since this friend is a non-Black woman of color.

This happened in April, and I’m still thinking about it on a near-daily basis in October. Then, I didn’t have any response. These days, I can’t help but think, “Why?”

Why is she so scared of me? She doesn’t need to be. She’s had time to get to know me, and I never bother her rom the beginning. So what brought this on?

But then I remember what else she told me: not only was she scared of me, but she was scared of Black people in general.

I would think that’s a result of coming from a predominately white setting, in the outskirts of Hartford, Conn., adopted by and raised in a White family. She may not have know many Black people throughout school, if any, and her many trips between CT and NYC were starting to change that dynamic. However, she still had/has a lot of mind-opening to do. And what does that say about her current, everyday interactions she may have with other Black people, now that she resides in the Bronx?

Another question: why did she feel I needed to know how she initially felt about me before? What was she getting out of it aside from what she probably thought was absolving herself from guilt? And why did she pick such a setting to do it?

Because she could’ve told me about this ANYWHERE ELSE OTHER THAN A TEA PARTY. AT A CONVENTION. She also could’ve kept it to herself. As I type this, I can’t help but assume this was somehow her way of making herself feel better without consideration of how I would feel hearing it.

This whole thing still feels like an extended minute that will never end, a minute of my life I’ll never get back. And I may never have the courage to ask her the above questions. And I can’t expect some kind of apology for it; I believe she’s just too far gone.