Monday, October 04, 2010

It sucks being a victim.

Bear with me while I vent a little...

So I get a call at work this morning and the ADT rep informs me that my burglar alarm is going off.  My first thought is that my brother or my mother accidentally set something off.  I tell them to alert the police just in case, while I give my family a call.  I call Ma - no answer; probably not at my house.  Then I call Chike - he left shortly after I did and set the alarm.  So this could be the real deal.

And it was.  When Chike and I arrived at the house there were two police officers waiting.  The burglars had kicked in my front door and taken my TV and one of my computer monitors.  I was in shock.

Since then, I've had a few hours to calm down and try to set things in order.  A contractor is putting the finishing touches on my replacement door frame (with better reinforcement this time around), and my insurance claim has already been processed (they'll mail out a check to me first thing tomorrow).  I might even be able to make it to my class tonight.  And thankfully I have a home alarm, or I would have more than I did.

As you can tell, I'm trying to look on the bright side of things.  I would have lost most of the little faith that I had left in humanity if it wasn't for the people who have helped me along today.  But the truth is that it still hurts.  Not so much that my electronic gadgets were stolen (and we all know how much I love gadgets), but the feeling of being utterly violated.  I've taken my security for granted for so long, even when I hear similar stories from friends about being burglarized.  It's totally different when it happens to you.  And it sucks.

I guess I don't have much else to say than that.  Hopefully the next (of my lately infrequent) post returns to concerts or tech gear or something superficially philosophical.  I'm not even sure that I'll post this...maybe after a night or two to sleep over it.

Update: I guess I should post this after sitting on it for a week.  I'm obviously a lot calmer than I was a week ago, and things are pretty much back to normal.