In spite of stereotypes, or because of them?

Now I'll be the first to tell you that people don't exactly consider me to be "dark."
Then again, when you compare me to most of the people on my campus I'm not exactly "light," either.

And it hasn't escaped my notice that, even though I love my school... I live in the boonies.
And I'm black.

*cue gasps and "OMG I didn't know you were black!" from readers* (lol)

I have two jobs doing non-medical in-home senior care, one on the weekends and one that's during the week until I get my diploma in 3 weeks.

For this job during the week, I have one specific client the entire time (unless it ends up that I get a new one or something).
Well, said client lives HARDCORE out in the boonies. I mean you take the town my school is in and drive half an hour to an even smaller town.

Don't get me wrong, I absolutely love my client. She's a sweetheart.
And I don't have a problem with driving the half hour to get there in the evenings.
What I DO mind, however, is driving hack to school around 10 at night, when there's nobody on the road except for me...

I seriously quake the whole way back because, if I'm being totally honest... Well, I'm just nervous and that's all there is to it. I'm absolutely terrified of getting pulled over in the middle of the night in the middle of nowhere.

Now of course unless they have awesome vision then it's not like they can see who's behind the wheel, but you hear so many horror stories of women who were either pulled over or who had car troubles then were raped and/or mugged and/or killed by someone who stopped to help or something.

And let's face it: There's a reason that there are so many horror stories about black people in the boonies. On my first day of work with this particular client I saw at least one person watch me drive by - and not because I was the only one with a car, because plenty of people out there have them.
Heck, for a little town the houses were much nicer than I thought, too.

Just to give you an idea of just how small this town is: my client isn't concerned about locking her doors or about closing one of her doors. Or closing her blinds.

I keep waiting for someone to poke there nose in the windows, and for me to go screaming - regardless of whether or not the person happens to be a neighbor.

*cue scary movie suspense music*

People don't need to knock to enter, either. I was told that whenever I arrive I don't knock on the door and instead just go in. Whenever her neighbors arrive I'm only alerted by the jingle of the bells on her front door.

Now I keep wondering how much of this is me being unfair and if I need to give it a rest, how much of it is me being realistic, and how much is me being overly cautious and if I should not worry as much.
But it's hard not to worry.

It was especially horrible driving back from work on... Wednesday, I believe. I don't know if you saw it, but there was an episode of Criminal Minds on TV where this guy was preying on college girls with similar appearances (I'm well aware that I don't look like anybody out there, ok? so one obstacle down), and then it turned into college girls with similar appearances while they were babysitting (now I don't babysit, but I'm sure you see the resemblance), and THEN he got someone who was about to leave after babysitting - AND he killed the dad, too!
THEN he got into the house of his old babysitter, who apparently married his dad and he was apparently in love with her, and they actually showed a close-up of him cutting her arm!

Oh, and they showed him looking into the windows of all these girls.
Creepy much, correct? Especially when I thought about how the doors in the house I was in were unlocked...

I mean, without even putting the race card into it, I avoid parking in parking garages. I HATE having to do it at the airport, and if there's no parking at the mall then I'd rather park out in Egypt away from cars.
Heck, I try to avoid parking next to people at the store, especially bigger vehicles (and not just the idiots likely to horribly ding my car).

Thankfully I do not have agoraphobia or anything of that sort. Because wow.

I just keep telling myself that not breathing is for dead people. Thankfully (yet at the same time regretfully) I keep reminding myself that I only have 3 more weeks with my client.

Reminder to self: not breathing is for dead people.