Almost Broken

I have had a long absence because I was delivered a big shock that brought my functioning and motivation very low. Our family survived the office burglary and the hundreds of hours of work it took to recover our business. We got our W-2’s out in time which was nothing short of a miracle from God. What a relief to start settling back into our normal routine. Until four days later when my home was burglarized.

My safety and my sanity were both left at risk. With my alarm on, they were brazen enough to enter my home, search through every room, and steal my jewelry before running. This absolutely destroyed what sense of safety I had managed to rebuild by being hyper-vigilant, and by knowing I was secure with an alarm set. After the police left, I sunk into my recliner and let the tears weakly roll down my cheeks, hopeless, I was never going to be safe anywhere ever again.

Through another miracle from our Father, I received a phone call an hour later that the police had caught the boys I described, breaking into another home, also with an alarm. I was asked to go identify them and to also see if they had my property. I started to get excited as I drove to them because most of what they had taken was sentimental. I skimmed through several bags of jewelry they had stolen, and felt a defeated let down when I could not find mine. The officer said that didn’t mean it wasn’t them and I did in fact make a positive ID of the three boys I had seen walking out front of my home.

The fear and the trembling started as I drove away. These boys now had a face and a vehicle to tie to my house, and I had just fingered them in a crime. The police took them back to my house and they admitted to burglarizing it. I was very happy at first thinking at least they have the guys and they will get them off the street for awhile. Hopefully they would choose not to return to our neighborhood.

Very shortly after things quieted down, terror struck. I couldn’t think, I couldn’t work, I couldn’t eat, I could barely drive. I kept seeing their faces in my house and in my bedroom. Memories, intrusive thoughts, and flashbacks of the rape were coming fast and furious. I had never felt violated from a burglary before, just intensely angry, now I had faces to put with the crime, to put in my house, MY house, and the feeling of violation was overwhelming.

Letters and requests from the court started pouring in. There was a victim impact statement to write, a request for restitution to fill out, notarize and file, hearings to appear at, and more statements to be made. Each just keeping the past in the present, stirring up trouble, re-fueling my fear.