I couldn’t get pepper spray without a license, so I went with the knife.

That law has since changed in MA, and I hope that my telling that story to Elizabeth Warren helped change it.

I was utterly horrified to discover I couldn’t get pepper spray. I couldn’t even keep myself reliably enrolled in Mass Health, as awesome as it was.

No license needed for a knife so I got that instead. Now since a knife can’t actually stop an attack very well, I had to use it as a deterrent.

To do that I had to promise myself I would give anyone who attacked me life altering consequences. Once I had that established, I stopped getting fucked with.

Before I armed myself, after the attack, it was like I had a crack in my aura. Predatory people could smell the fear on me. Had a few weird run-ins that almost turned into fights. One time a guy just put his hand out and stopped me. It was terrifying.

The thing that hurt really bad about the attack was the way the guy stumbled drunkenly away, probably forgetting about me, having zero consequences. So at least I can prevent that from happening again.