Under My Skin

Belong

I didn't sleep much that night. Neither did Connor, I get the feeling. Thankfully, I was just exhausted enough by the events of the night to get in an hour or so of sleep after we went back to bed. But it certainly wasn't uninterrupted. Every time that godforsaken police car came down the road, I could tell. I could hear it, I could feel it. I hated it. Honestly, I didn't feel too much safer. I just felt a different type of fear. My mother always taught me to be cautious around the police. Even then, I was different from everybody else. I wasn't a fan of being touched by strangers, not when I wasn't expecting it or prepared for it. It wasn't anywhere near as severe as it is now. When they died, I lost my ability to be touched. Before they passed, it was more of an aversion. Though, if you kept going or there were other factors in play, I could easily shut down. My mother always told me that this could make it more difficult to interact with the police. If I can't answer them directly, if I can't look them in the eyes, they'll assume I'm on drugs. If I don't let them touch me, if I shut down and stop responding, if I start to panic, it could be bad news. She said they typically don't have the proper training to deal with people like me. I'm not fully sure I know what she meant by 'people like me', I'm not sure I ever will. But I understand the gist of it. And I understand that I'm not like everyone else, even if I don't fully understand why.

Even though my problems were far less severe when I was young and with my parents, they were still present. I lacked social skills, I panicked easily, especially when I felt someone was mad at me. While some would call that non-compliance under the scenario of a discussion with an officer, I would just call it my natural response. I shut down sometimes. Especially with all the variables of being stopped by a police officer. The possibility of bright lights, flashing lights, somebody yelling.. being touched by somebody I didn't give permission to. And my response will only make it worse. They don't know how to deal with things like that, with people like me. And people like me are the ones that pay the price for that inadequacy. Because of that, I was taught to be avoid the police. An interaction gone south could end very badly for me.

I know my mother wasn't trying to scare me with that. She was just trying to help me be aware of it. She wanted me to be safe, to know the truth of my situation. But that doesn't change the fact that it frightened me. If I ran into just one officer who didn't know how to properly deal with people like me, it could be very bad for me.

I'm not in as big of a risk for being apprehended in the first place as some people are, I know that. But I'm also at a much higher risk of being mistreated if I were apprehended than most other people who look like me. My mother said people like me are more likely to be killed by them after apprehension than people who don't have those problems. I know my mother's goal wasn't to scare me. It was to keep me aware of the way I act and respond to those things, keep me aware of the fact that I may need to learn to fight my natural reaction of shutting down, simply for my own safety.
I'm frightened of police. And having them drive down my road every fifteen minutes is like an alarm to me. I wake up the second I hear those tires coming down the road.

Connor's generally very understanding of my aversion to police officers. But he doesn't fully get it. He knows of what happens, he knows why I'm afraid and why other's are afraid. But his mother never told him what my mother told me. She never had to tell him that. Just like other people have had to tell their children certain things about the police that my mother never had to tell me. He understands it, intellectually, he knows why I'm afraid, he knows why other people are afraid. But he doesn't get it. He's never had to live it. He's never been told to try to alter the way his body responds to overstimulation and confrontation. He's never been told that he has to be more careful of the police than some other people.
He does his best to understand, and he holds similar feelings about the police, but he doesn't know it the way I know it.