When you're born working class, you run expecting to save yourself. Being chased is as potentially lethal as it gets. You escape at any cost. You focus. You think. You deal with the trauma later, or don't. Survival comes at a cost... one you pay because you have to.
Being chased is a trauma that can cause PTSD. To the onlooker, what do they see? Those adrenaline two-a-penny scenes from movies? The ones where there are no consequences to the biology and neurology of the victim? Perhaps. How well educated are we in these matters? Surely it matters.
I've been chased before by those stronger and in numbers. I ran fast, then either hid or found refuge. It's all you can do. I escaped every time. But those moments running, my brain on speed-mode, ultra focused on the escape, they stay in my head as if they were filmed in slow motion. He was in a car, in a street that was hard to turn round in, so I stopped running forwards and ran back passed his car to a nearby hotel, banging on the doors for the night porter to let me in. They were in a car so I ran down a side street and hid in a shallow bay of a garden fence - they backed up to see an "empty street" and left. Now that I think of it, I've been chased quite a few times. Every time it was a man, or men, in a car. Only once was I in a car too, every other time I was running on foot. It's terrifying and all they are thinking about is what? Sex? Adrenaline highs with the boys? Real men defend women. Those guys, those guys... I hope they grew up to become real men.
Being chased brings a primal fear, the kind that brings out every ounce of you, that empties the reserve tank of the reserve tank. It is the kind of fear of the worst of nightmares, the kind that ignores physical and mental pain in the pursuit of safety.
I wonder of the perspective of the chaser, if they can fathom the fear of the chased. For in this need to escape my head and heart go to the place that is crushed and without light or match to bring a comforting spark. I feel the screaming of my lungs and the will of my muscles to go far beyond what exercise could ever demand. This is the body and brain if full survival mode and it is nothing but pain.
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