Location: Langley Park/Silver Spring
Time: Daytime (9:30am-3:30pm)

Langley Park, Maryland

For the longest year of my life, I lived in an apartment off of New Hampshire Avenue that was about a ten-minute drive to College Park. At first, I was thrilled with the cheap rent and all of my neighbors seemed really nice, but within a month I became so agitated that I would drive over to different neighborhoods just to get groceries or a drink.  On an almost daily basis I was harassed going to the pharmacy or the bank. Some men would just leer at me, licking their lips and bending at their knees to get a better look at me. Other times they would say nasty things, thinking I couldn’t understand them [sic]. I tried to fight back, but of course nothing really worked. It got to the point that I started to make some terrible judgments about people, and it’s taken me a long time to stop being defensive out on the street. I remember reading one post where someone said that this happens everywhere, and I know that’s true .. but in some places it is much more commonplace.

Submitted on 10/10/12 by “MA”