The Most Important Decision I Ever Made

CW: trauma, assault

The most important decision I ever made came at a time of great trauma. After the first HugTrain, I moved to London. It was, I thought, a dream come true. During my first month there, I got mugged by four teens at a deserted commuter train station. It was dark. I was late meeting a friend and my phone had died. They pushed me up against a wall and rifled through my pockets. One of them even whispered in my ear, “Make it easy on yourself. Don’t fight back.” When it was all over and I was in a daze, I hit the police button on the platform and they came and drove me home after taking my statement. The muggers had taken everything. My money, my cards, my passport, my laptop. Everything. I had a choice to make in that moment. A few choices. I could choose to hate that ethnic group. I could choose to hate London. I could choose to feel betrayed by the universe after having devoted myself and a lot of my own money turning a vacation into a mission of service (I only started crowdfunding HugTrain after my last brain injury in 2012).

Luckily, I was aware of those options, and I would possibly have been justified in making those choices, but I am grateful every day that I was able to choose differently. You could chalk this up to my being neurodivergent, but I now see it as the moment I understood the importance of cultivating space between events and our chosen reactions to them in order to help ourselves heal.

I chose to see the mugging as a London rite of passage that I had gotten out of the way quickly so I could go on towards making my dream city a home. I chose to see the mugging as an expression of how damaging our current economic and political system is, and I didn’t blame the muggers for trying to get ahead in whatever way they could because that’s how our broken system works. I chose to see them as products of that broken system rather than as evil and products of a “bad” ethnicity. I chose to understand that, despite having devoted myself to service, there was still A LOT of work to do and that I needed to get to it.

I’m sharing this because something tells me someone needs to hear it. I’m not judging anyone who has been in similar situations and has made the choices I chose not to make. I still got scary and paralysing flashbacks from it for a good while after, and having to relive it weeks later on the police’s terms despite their inability to retrieve any of the things that were taken from me or get any kind of justice was quite awful. So was dealing with replacing my passport through the Canadian embassy and missing my cousin’s 50th birthday in Paris because they refused to issue me a travel document. They acted as though I was a security risk and had no regard for the trauma I had just experienced.

I’m not saying that it was easy, and it's possible that I may never get over it or stop replaying it over and over and even, at times, blaming myself for it. But my hope is that sharing this will help someone see that they have other choices when it comes to reacting to difficult and even traumatic situations, and that there is a value in cultivating the space between events and our chosen reactions to them. Maybe that’s naïve of me. But it’s how I survived and how I became the person I am today.

It also helped me understand what a lot of people go through in similar situations. It’s nowhere near as violating as a #MeToo event, but it was definitely an opportunity to empathise with what it’s like despite having only experienced a fraction of what survivors of those moments go through. What I experienced was enough to give me nightmares and flashbacks and to understand how awful it is to be a victim of someone else’s desires without any of the institutions that are supposed to help you on your side. I felt quite helpless and alone, and I can’t imagine how much more difficult it is for people who have experienced much worse things than I have.

The one good thing that came out of this situation was the willingness of others to help. Yes, there were those who tried to analyse it and find a way to blame me and admonish me for “putting myself” in that situation (i.e. blaming the victim), and it’s why I don’t share this story a lot, but many, even strangers, went out of their way to help. And it really meant a lot. If you’re reading this, thank you.

Another thing I am grateful for that came as a result of this was meeting someone I never would have met had I gone to Paris for my cousin’s birthday. I am no longer in contact with them, but they made a lot of great experiences possible and they were a lot of fun to spend time with at the time. Our time together was just what I needed then, and while I sometimes regret how it ended, mostly because it was abrupt and not something I had any say in, on the whole, I am grateful for it.

I hope this helps someone and that it’s not just tone-deaf oversharing.

Thanks for reading and please do not hesitate to get in touch if you need someone to talk to. Ever. I’m always here for you.