Eyes Wide Open

“Trust your rational mind and your senses. They can be your ballast in a storm of emotions.”

Photo by Diana ✨: https://www.pexels.com/photo/concrete-chess-table-and-chairs-7450530/

There are moments in life when the world shifts, and instinct grips you so fiercely that it’s impossible to ignore. In one of those moments, I learned what it meant to truly trust myself. To know that even when I felt small and afraid, I had something bigger inside me than my fear.

I was in my early twenties, navigating life in London. I’d come to this city for the promise of adventure in a world capital and freedom from the constraints of a dysfunctional upbringing in the United States. It fulfilled those goals, but it also offered challenges I hadn’t anticipated, moments when my confidence fractured, and I wondered how I would survive.

There’s a certain romance to being young and broke in a big city, but it’s a freedom that comes at a cost. London was thrilling but also relentless, especially if you were a woman with limited resources and no safety net. After months of struggling, I’d fallen into homelessness—not out of recklessness, but out of necessity. The cleaning job I’d managed to secure wasn’t enough to cover rent, and the cost of even a modest bedsit in the city was beyond my means.

Two close friends, whom I’ll call J and K, had both been homeless at one point, and they’d shared their survival strategies with me. They suggested squatting as a last-ditch way to save on rent and buy myself time. Squatting was still possible in the late 1980s, though it wasn’t as common as in the previous decade. J and K helped me prepare, and we devised a plan: I would try squatting for a while, save whatever I could, and then find something more permanent.

Things didn’t go as planned. I learned that squatting is not an individual activity. Finding a place is based on networking and being accepted by the right people. Later, someone has to be at the squat at all times to avoid repossession. I had not fully understood this. I had been unpopular at school and was very much a loner. Over a period of weeks, I experienced multiple failed attempts to get into a squat.

Some of the attempts were almost humorous. One night, I met up with a young woman at Brixton tube station whilst carrying a borrowed crowbar. Upon reaching the house, my companion suddenly backed out on the grounds that she had a suspended sentence. On another night, I showed up to meet some people whilst carrying a small suitcase. With hindsight, carrying either a suitcase or a crowbar to a house break-in is utterly ridiculous, and I don’t blame those people for ditching me. Meanwhile, I slept each night in the narrow hallway of J and K’s flat.

By now, I had spent any reserve I had and could not afford to pay the one-week deposit to get another bedsit. It was also becoming harder and harder to keep working with the constant strain of not having a place to live. Increasingly desperate, I had to keep trying. 

One day, I heard about a community bulletin board in North London where people posted leads on squats. It felt like a glimmer of hope. Maybe this was my chance to find a stable place, a foothold. I tracked down the bus routes, gathered my remaining energy, and set off, my mind a tangle of hope and anxiety.

The building housing the bulletin board was old and slightly run-down, with creaky wooden stairs leading up to a dimly lit room. When I reached the top, I saw another young woman already there, her posture weary but determined. She looked like she’d been through similar struggles, and we struck up a conversation. It was comforting to come across a sister-in-arms. 

Then, partway through our conversation, a man appeared at the top of the stairs. He was older, with a serene smile that instantly put me on guard. My mother’s voice echoed in my mind, a warning drilled into me from childhood: Be careful around men you don’t know. Years of conditioning kept me wary, but his friendly demeanor softened my defenses. He joined our conversation easily, exuding a convincing warmth. His voice, gestures, and light laugh reminded me of friends I’d known back in the States who’d been safe, kind, and trustworthy. It wasn’t long before I found myself believing he might be one of those people.

My heart leaped when he mentioned he had a lead on a squat. He even had a car parked just outside and offered to take us there. The other young woman declined and left, but I hesitated, torn between caution and the gnawing need for a place to stay. I told myself I could assess the risk and remain on high alert. And also, his mannerisms felt so familiar. It felt almost like fate nudging me along.

The drive through North London was uneventful at first. We talked as if we had known each other some time, and he even mentioned he’d spent time in Harvard Square, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where I’d spent much of my teenage years. It felt like a strange coincidence, a sign that maybe this was all right. He described the permanent chess tables there in such detail that it felt like he connected me to a part of my past, grounding me somehow.

But then, as I glanced at him mid-conversation, I saw something that made my blood run cold. His face, which had been friendly and open, twisted into a dark, unsettling expression. It was only a flash—just a split-second shift—but it was like looking at a different person, someone I didn’t recognize. I glanced away, my heart pounding, hoping I’d imagined it. I wanted to rationalize it, to tell myself it was a trick of the light or a misinterpretation. But deep down, I knew. I had seen something dark in him, something dangerous.

Intuition is a powerful thing. I remembered reading somewhere that many women, before experiencing an assault, recalled brief moments they’d dismissed, small signs they’d rationalized away. I would not ignore this. I promised myself I would stay alert and trust what I’d seen, even if I didn’t fully understand it.

Eventually, we pulled up to a row of terraced houses in Hackney, a part of the city I didn’t know. He parked the car, maintaining his easy chatter, and led me to one of the front doors. Inside, the house was dim and quiet, and as he guided me through the ground floor, I heard two large dogs barking loudly behind a closed door. Their fierce, throaty growls reverberated through the hallway. I felt the hairs on the back of my neck prickle, a fresh wave of anxiety washing over me.

He laughed off the dogs, saying they were a deterrent for burglars. I forced a smile, but inside, I felt trapped. Every step up the narrow staircase felt like walking more profoundly into a maze I didn’t know how to escape.

At the top, he showed me through a couple of rooms. I was barely hearing a word he said because I was on such high alert. But when it happened, it was still a shock. He grabbed me by the shoulders, pressed me hard against the wall, and kissed me on the lips.

Then, something extraordinary happened. He pulled away, scrunched his face up, and said,

“Sorry.”

He was not looking at me when he said it and was clearly experiencing some kind of inner 

conflict. I did not hesitate. I hurled myself down the stairs as fast as I could, down two flights, past the barking dogs, out the front door, and onto the sidewalk. At one end of the street, I saw a big red double-decker bus letting on a queue of people. I ran as fast as I could towards it. I got there just as the doors were closing, and I was the last person to get on. I ran straight up the stairs and onto the upper deck, gasping for breath. I had not looked behind me at any point. I had no idea if the man had followed me or not, and if so, how close he was.

I had no idea where the bus was going, and I did not care. Although I seemed to be safe, I was still terrified by the experience. Had, in fact, the man gotten on the bus behind me? Was he downstairs, ready to come up to the upper deck at any moment? I talked myself through it. I was really pretty sure I was the last person to get on the bus, and that the door closed behind me. I recalled that I had to hold on tight to the handrail going up the stairs, as the bus was already moving at that point. Therefore, logic said that most likely, he was not on the bus.

But the thoughts continued. Would he find me again? Was he angry that I had gotten away? Again, I reasoned through it. He did not know my name. I was homeless and therefore could not be located through any kind of directory. Even if the man trawled through common homeless sleeping areas, he would not find me. He had no way of knowing of the existence of J or K or their hallway in which I was sleeping. I would never set foot in that community building again, and in a city of 6.8 million people, I was unlikely to bump into him.

As the bus wound its way through the streets of North London, I gradually started to feel safe. I focused on breathing regularly and letting the wild, terrified thoughts spinning in my mind subside. In a deeply comforting coincidence, the route terminated at a tube station called Angel. I cannot help but be grateful for the other “coincidences” that helped me escape harm.

I would not wish that level of fear on anyone. I am also fully aware that millions of people suffer attacks that are much worse, all the time. It is never the victim’s fault, and sometimes it cannot be avoided. I did avoid a physical attack, through the great fortune of the would-be attacker’s inner conflict. If he had not let go of me, the outcome would have surely been different. But I take full credit for making the most of that fleeting opportunity. Trusting what I observed for a split-second set me up for the best odds in the situation. So too, did logical reasoning help the situation by calming my emotions. Logic is infallible, true, unbiased. The emotions are going to come; there is no stopping them. They will come like a storm-swelled river breaking a dam.  But you don’t have to just leave it at that. Let your logical mind be your ally, a ballast in the tides of emotion. The waters do subside. Fearful situations can end; you can get past them. Your rational mind can help you.

I was left with this wisdom: trust yourself. You have instincts honed by generations of women who came before you. Fear is not something to be ashamed of; it’s a guide, a reminder that you are worth protecting and deserve to be safe. Listen to it. Let it remind you that you are stronger than any shadow cast by another person’s darkness.

You are powerful. You are resilient. And when you trust yourself, you are unstoppable.

(First published in Faith Over Fear: Powerful Women Share Stories of Resilience, by Divya Parekh and Lisa Marie Pepe, available on Amazon. https://a.co/d/hDnJKQW)