I cannot remember a more harrowing night that I have ever experienced. First, I had my whole meltdown as a result of Luke’s comment – an overreaction to him, but not to my whole situation. Hopefully I’ll be able to see Luke online or something today and explain why I got so upset. His comment was the last straw, not the entire haystack. I hope he can understand… I still want to be his friend.

In the background of that was the knowledge that Jess “borrowed” her parents car and took off – to who knew where. This of course was preferable to the Other Choice, but still knowing that my best friend was possibly endangering herself and certainly taking some very extreme action is a hard thing to forget. She promised to call me “when she stopped driving,” and I knew it would be a late phone call. Well, about 12:20 (an hour and a half after I usually go to bed) her mother called sounding very lost and asking about Jess. I talked to her for 25 minutes and told her everything that if I were Jess I would’ve wanted her to hear. At the same time I tried to be sympathetic, because I know it would be very difficult to watch your child run away (though she had her cell phone, so AT&T; could track her anywhere. Creepy) out of sheer desperation. All in all it was a terrible thing to have to witness and be involved in; I was just so glad when Jess called at 2:30 and said that she was driving home and that she’d talked with her father for an hour. I hope they can reach some kind of accord, because what Jess was feeling sounded so sad, so awful, that I can understand why she did what she did. She got to Spokane.

So it was 2:30 by the time we started really trying to sleep. But some time after that – I have no idea what time it was – Eric woke us by shouting loudly and pounding vigorously on our door. “What’s going on?” I wondered to myself. Eric is a very considerate roommate and I had a difficult time imagining him ever waking us at some ungodly hour for a frivolous reason. Well, his reason wasn’t frivolous. Somebody had broken into our apartment through one of the big windows – it was wide open when we got to the living room – and had stolen one of his gaming systems, the Playstation 2. Amazingly, Eric heard the thief struggling with our difficult front door (it’s completely nonintuitive: turn the wrong way and pull towards yourself) and went to investigate. There was a nondescript black man standing there with his PS2 and its controller. Naturally Eric asked, “Who are you?” to which our thief replied, “I’m Rich, let me out.” He kept repeating this while Eric insisted he give the PS2 back. Eventually “Rich” gave it to Eric, who then let him out and immediately woke us to explain the situation. I went with him to look around, and sure enough one of our big windows – the one with the hard-to-kill plant – was wide open and blowing wind in. Eric closed and locked them, so the apartment was sort of secure, but there is no lock on his small window, so it’s still penetrable. Also if anybody really wanted to they could easily break the glass of any window and get in; that’s the nature of a basement apartment. We decided to pass on calling the police because all the thief got away with was a $10 controller.

Up to now we’ve felt OK, fairly safe, despite the fact we’re in Worcester. Ian and I had considered buying some renter’s insurance just on the offchance that something might happen; now here it has. I feel completely violated. When I got back to Ian and my room I began shaking uncontrollably and felt horribly nauseous. Somebody broke into our apartment! On top of everything else that night, on top of my Geology exam tomorrow, something true and BIG happens, though thank God he didn’t get anything really valuable. I’m so glad Eric investigated: if he hadn’t, we would have just found the open window and missing PS2. I still shake when I think too much about it (but maybe that’s from exhaustion; I didn’t sleep much last night, as you might guess). If you’re interested in Eric’s take on this, I suggest you check out the Punch Drunk Momentalism link to the left; it’s the second-from-top post as of now.

And now I have to go to Clark, be alone, and act normal. Dear Lord please give me strength for this day. Without you I do not know how I will survive. Please help me to be temperate and calm, loving to all people: a vessel through which Your light may shine. I’m terrified.

– KF –

2 thoughts on “Dear Lord, What a Night.

  1. hey hey,

    i’m sorry about what happened. i understand it’s not easy living off-campus AND in worcester. as much as it seems “safer” near WPI, i guess there’s always something going on. anyway, about the previous post– i’m the same way as you are. you’re one of my favorite people to talk to, and i always enjoyed sitting in your room at night doing just that. don’t ever think that you’re not an “interesting” person when it comes to things like that. because above all, you are one of few that i have that great interaction with.

    love ya 🙂

    kristin

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.