Stressed out, frustrated, afraid…these feelings this past week lead to stress eating for the first time in my life. Never have I ever done this and I don’t know why I’ve resorted to this method of relieving stress.
On Friday, in the wee hours of the morning (probably around 1:30 a.m. or so), someone broke into our home while we were asleep. Yes, asleep. The side paneling that attaches to the door was busted and the door itself was halfway open. A light was on. And we didn’t hear any of it.
Normally I get up around 6 a.m., to get ready for work, but this time, my hubby and I were getting ready to go out of town for the weekend for a family event (there was a party for his grandma’s 90th birthday). I planned to go into work early and leave early, to get into SF in time for our flight. On Friday morning, I struggled a bit to get out of bed (as I’m not a morning person). Right before I came out of the bedroom at 5:30 a.m., I noticed the light was on in the living room through the bottom of the bedroom door. I thought to myself, did he leave the light on again? He sometimes has a tendency to do that (very rarely though). However, as I came out of the bedroom, I saw that the door was slightly open and there was wood on the floor, the main light was on. I immediately yelled out to my husband, “Get up, somebody broke into our apartment!” I’ve never seen him get up so fast. While he snapped up from sleeping and came into the living room, so many thoughts ran through my head. Is anything missing? Why did they turn the light on? Did they see the travel itinerary? I’m sure they saw the suitcase…are they going to come back in case they saw the itinerary, potentially knowing we were going to be out of town? I quickly checked my purse (as my wallet was wide open – it was hard to miss) to see if anything had been taken. Everything was still there. My cell phone was on the couch as I had left it. The laptop was still on the floor. Everything seemed in place as I’d left it the night before.
We paged the apartment management and immediately called the police. The police officer took a look at our apartment asked a few questions, asked for our IDs, took a look at our door and the wood spread out on the floor and wrote some things down on his writing pad. In the meantime, I thought, “Aren’t you going to take pictures? Call for backup? Take some fingerprints? Try to find the people that did this to us? This is a crime scene!! You’re supposed to do all this high-level stuff!! That’s all you’re going to do…write on your silly pad and take a few notes? This is our home!! Something horrible could have happened to us….we could have been tortured, even KILLED!!” The officer told us he thought this incident could have been one of a mistaken identity…wrong apartment? We’ve lived at our place for almost two years, we don’t have any enemies, that we know of. We sure don’t plan on making any. We’re homebodies and rarely talk to our neighbors. What do you mean mistaken identity?
After thanking the officer for his time and doing his cop duties, he left around 6:30 a.m. I immediately tried to get ready for work as fast as I could. As I got dressed, I thought to myself, shouldn’t the officer have done more? Why didn’t the intruders take anything? Why did they turn the light on? Why did they leave the light on??
After speaking to our neighbors later that day, we found out that the dog began barking around the time the intruders were making noise on our door and maybe one or two of the neighbors were awake downstairs. After the dog began barking, they initially saw one shadow pass by downstairs. Then two more later on. We’ve come to the conclusion that the neighbor’s dog might have scared them away and prevented them from taking anything. That, and our guardian angels were protecting us that night.
We’re still a bit shook up from that day. We haven’t fully slept well and I’m still in panic mode when I wake up in the morning; but we are thoroughly thankful that nothing was stolen and that we are safe. We’re so lucky to have reliable friends that take care of us and watch our back. Likewise, we’d do anything for our friends.
So this special and unique Thanksgiving week we’re thankful for safety, a place we can call home and each other. I cannot express in words how thankful I am to have my hubby. I feel much safer when he’s around and he’s there to comfort me, especially in times like these.
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