Be safe

There is a terrifyingly scary situation playing out in front of us in Australia at a moment.  A Melbourne woman, Jill Meagher is missing in what increasingly looks like a sinister way.  There is CCTV footage one of the most horrific and spine chilling 10 minutes of video I'll ever see.  Because it's real, not some dramatised TV series.  It's her, in her last moments that she has been seen.  I am disturbed to the core.  Her and her family must be terrified and rigid with fear.
I'm not sure why I'm writing about this, I am neither informed nor involved.  I am simply a newspaper reader, a TV watcher, a woman, and a woman who probably would have walked home if it was only a short distance. I have no business writing about this, and yes, there are many writing about her, about the incident, about victims, about women's safety, about who's to blame, about finger pointing.

I am none of these, I am just profoundly disturbed.

I silently scream at the screen "don't go" as she hovers and hesitates.  I can only imagine her family and friend's horror at watching this.  I mistakenly and well meaningly joined a Facebook page, only to find amongst the 99% of good intentioned people, a cesspit of trolls, cranks, pyschics and rubber neckers. People waiting, feeding off each other's transparent greed for horror and tragedy.

I ran in a well marketed, promotional run this year - Nike She Runs the Nights - a big "ra ra" for women reclaiming the night and the footpaths and unifying in an act of women empowerment against everything that stops us.  What a crock. These footpaths will never be safe for us.

And it only takes Jill Meagher and a few moments watching a CCTV footage to remind us of this.