I wake up to a bright orange light and a cracking sound. Adrenaline starts pumping through my body as I bolt out of bed. In a half-awake panic, I make my way over to the window. My fears are confirmed: the back garden is on fire. My chorus of “Oh my God” begins immediately.
Going upstairs, I try to call emergency services, and instead hear a message in Dutch: “This phone number is not in service.” I look out through our kitchen window, as if maybe my bedroom window was somehow showing the wrong view —nope, still fire.
I run back downstairs, grab my laptop and passport, and hustle my sister out of the room. Then I wake up my housemate to evacuate: “Il y a un feu, il faut te lever.”
We hustle up the stairs to quite a different scene. One housemate is on the phone with the fire department, having managed to call the right number: 112, not 211. The others are running an assembly line of filled water buckets outside. I stand useless in the living room, clutching my valuables, while they put out the fire.
In the days after, I keep thinking how glad I am for my housemates, that they were able to address the problem instead of running from it.
Back in college, a friend and I had a falling out. I was hurt about it, and, honestly, angry, for a long time. It’s hard to know how my own anger and hurt is received by others. Well, I now have one review. Over a coffee years later—our personal truth and reconciliation committee—they tell me: “You just went so cold.”
When I tell my sister about this, she nods knowingly. “So Jo March–coded.” I can’t provide an objective assessment of any commonalities with Jo, but I can unfortunately attest to the veracity of my completely shutting down when I feel emotionally vulnerable. I freeze.
If I’m feeling overwhelmed, at work or in my personal life, my flight-or-freeze pattern rears its head. I’m struck by the urge to ghost people, to ghost my obligations. Fighting doesn’t come instinctively to me—for a relationship, or a fire. This is most often principally to my own detriment. A few days ago, though, as I turned this reflection over in my head, I had to confront a different side of it.
On a regional train to Zurich, an old man has made it his personal mission to ensure that no one sits on the stairs up to the first class carriage. A girl sits there; he scares her off. Another sits down; he comes and yells at her too. This second girl, however, doesn’t move. He rips the headphones off of her head. She defends herself and keeps sitting there, while he rattles on, and while I and other people watch the whole thing. This is happening in German—I want to react, but I feel paralyzed, including but not only by not being able to speak German. At the same time, this is all happening about five feet from me; I am staring, trying to urge myself into action, and keep making eye contact with both of them. Can I string together a sentence to shame him away? Should I get the conductor, who’s standing outside on the platform? After about thirty seconds, he goes back up the stairs and she turns to face forward, clearly shaken.
I can at least say sorry to her afterwards and ask her if she’s alright, let her know that I saw what happened, that it was ridiculous of him. But it’s too little, too late, and it’s horrible to sit there and watch her cry after. I feel like an idiot, the in-person lived reality of the bystander effect, to which I’ve always told myself I would be the exception. I cycle through 100 things I wish I would’ve said to him, ways I wish I had reacted, instead of freezing.
Flight and freeze turned inward, or towards a small-scale backyard fire, are embarrassing. Towards a threat to another person’s safety and security, though, I fear that they are morally shameful.
Can one cultivate a fight response instead?
I think that I need one, and not only for confrontations on the train. I do not want my contributions to our world to be only as an observer, with passivity, paralysis, and self-protection.
Rylan Shewmaker (‘21) calls herself a geographer, though none of her degrees substantiate this. After growing up in Texas and studying in Grand Rapids, she moved to Brussels, Belgium, for her master’s degree in urban studies. She still lives in Brussels and works for a housing non-profit. She enjoys audiobooks, bike commuting, sunny days, and learning new things.
