Hello friends of Hive! On Friday of this week I was on a trip, and I was planning to tell you about this experience, show you some places that you see along the way, I was quite excited because I was going to my town, it was about 2 and a half hours of travel by public transport, the picture I took was just before leaving where I live.

The trip was not what I expected, because I was almost the whole trip with fear, and all this text will be about the reason for that fear.

I used to travel from Monday to Friday from one state to another, I lived in Yaracuy and studied in Lara (Venezuela), it is about an hour's journey by public transport, at that time it was very constant that criminals entered the public transport units (buses) and stole people's belongings, money, telephone, there were occasions where you could hear that the drivers, collectors or passengers were killed. So, being a very frequent user at that time, I had a notion of how the system of these units worked and I learned that criminals usually entered the units in pairs, seeming not to know each other, they entered the unit at random stops, not at the terminals, the clothing had its peculiarities, and they did the robbery in the sections where there was no population or stops, because being road/highway there are many areas that are desolate.

I learned that these were the main characteristics of this system, so when I traveled to the university and something like this happened, I was filled with fear, "they are going to rob me, they are going to rob all of us". And it was very complicated because, for example, I often left the university late and I had to take a bus, there was not much transportation so that I could say "Well, I'm not going on this one, I'm going on the next one", but the first one that passed by I had to take it. And it was very frequent that when I passed by desolate places or saw people with these characteristics, I was afraid and went all the way scared.

I thought that I could be robbed, that something could happen to me, that they were going to rob all of us, the phone, the money, anything worse. There were many things that went through my head, even something that I did at that time (I no longer do it) and there are many Venezuelans who do it, is to have two phones, a good quality phone and a poor quality one, we call this economic phone "coquito" because it is usually small. So to avoid the theft of our good quality phones, we have the "coquito" so that if a theft occurs, we can give the economic phone and not the expensive one.

That strategy gave me a little peace of mind, I always turned off my phone and hid it and had the other phone in sight. It also gave me fear because there were times when people would give criminals these types of phones and the criminals would get angry and end up assaulting or killing people, so it was a double-edged sword, you could take care of your phone, because some people would say "hey, but how much does a phone matter?" Here in Venezuela, at that time having a phone was difficult, at least for me, it cost me a lot, I had to collect dollar for dollar to buy it, and that someone else simply took it away was something that hurt me, I used it both to communicate and for anything at the university, because I had no computer, my phone was almost my computer, so it was a strong issue.

I lived this issue of public transportation for a long time, many times I went calmly, I even went to review any subject of the classes, if it was very early I slept a little, however, when I saw something that made me feel insecure, I spent the whole trip with fear, thinking a thousand things and without being able to do anything because I was worried.

Since I got pregnant and I have my baby, I have not been able to continue with the classes, only the online ones, so I have time without using public transportation frequently and I thought this fear had disappeared. Until this Friday.

This trip was planned, my mom and grandma have their birthdays so I wanted to be with them, also my college classmates are graduating and I want to be with them that special day. So I would be traveling from where I live to my town which is about 2 and a half hours and then in the next few days to Lara state for the graduation. So public transportation is included in all of this.

This Friday I was very excited, I had even thought to share this experience here in the community, but from a cheerful point of view, when we got to the bus (I was with my baby and my partner) we sat down and waited for the unit to fill up, it took about 1 hour to fill up before we could leave. During that time I took some pictures, here I show you two of them.

When the bus was full, and we were leaving, 2 men entered, with a suspicious attitude, one at the beginning and the other at the end of the bus, I was alarmed and scared because this was part of the characteristics of a robbery. I thought about getting off, but I knew that the next bus would be leaving in quite some time and we would be late, which is also dangerous (that is another fear, that criminals will rob us on the way when it is night).

So we stayed, I turned off and put my phone away, and I was silent most of the way because one of these people was very close to me, he was standing and I was sitting. I was going as I described in the past, I was afraid, thinking a thousand things, in the parts where there were no villages my fear was greater, I was alert to any movement that seemed strange to me. My hands were sweating, my heart was racing, I was very anxious. I was also trying to calm down because I really had no proof that something was going to happen, only my perception.

I just wanted to get there fast, to stop feeling like that, I remembered all the times I felt that fear and realized that it is still there. Something important is that if something happens, the police are very unlikely to arrive or do anything, the criminals just run away and that's it. Part of that fear also goes there, there is no sense that if something happens, help will come.

I know that my fear was not real, because I was not being robbed, my fear was for an imaginary situation, it is a conditioned fear, where seeing the stimulus activates my fear response.

I have heard people who have also felt this way, and that being in other countries where the crime rate is lower, they stop having this fear because they know that nothing will happen to them, the environment changes and therefore the results as well.

Fortunately nothing happened, one of the people who was near me at one point smiled at my baby in a tender way and that for me was an avalanche of feelings because it completely took away my fear, with that smile it was like "I am a person like you, I am not a monster", I felt very guilty after that because I know I misjudged him. I know I made a movie for myself without having any kind of evidence. And I really tried not to feel that way, but I couldn't help it when I saw him I felt scared.

My trip was not pleasant, many of my trips have not been, and although this is not one of my strongest fears, it is one that is latent.

Thank you for coming here and reading me.