The night before, I was so amused with my Horoscope that says this-
Sometimes, your dreams are just silly and weird plays that your subconscious performs at night -- not visions of what your future holds. So if disturbing images have been keeping you tossing and turning lately, don't worry too much about it. This is just a phase and will be over soon. Turn your attention away from your dreams, because you can't control them. Instead, start exerting more power over your waking hours. Then you'll start to see things change.
- that I resolved to remember my dreams before I went to sleep. I also took some sleeping aid to guarantee me some good night's sleep. Did all my nightly rituals including a short chat session with friends abroad, text sessions with friends in town, flirted with Broody a bit, carefully set the alarm on my mobile and put all three on the upper right corner of the bed, for easy access in case someone shoots an email, then I went to sleep.
Good sleep, but I woke up to a nightmare. A real one. I've been burglarized. All my phones stolen. Only my mobile phones, the burglar using an open window to gain access in an otherwise secured room. At first, because of the above horoscope, I thought I was dreaming. But the open windows, the displaced curtains, and the "subscriber cannot be reached" prompt on all the numbers, they all tell me this is real. So I called security.
After the commotion that ended with the security personnel taking all the details to generate a report, I realized that the burglar also tried and almost successfully broke into the house using the front door. If not for last night's afterthought to use the double locks. I should have thought of closing the windows, too (but I like the simoy ng hangin pag magpapasko). I should have just left the phones on the table, away from the windows. I should have just used the A/C. I should have done this, done that.
Then realization hits: it could have been a more tragic incident. The burglar could have broken in and took more, and maybe, melatonin notwithstanding, I could have woken up and things could have gone ugly.
All through the day things aren't sinking in as fast as they should. I am on autopilot. Have never been burglarized before, my entire life, for real. Sure when I was a kid I could hear my parents talk about someone trying to break in the night before, but we had fierce guard dogs then nobody would have success in stealing anything from our house.
Slowly, rage set it. At first I was cursing the person who did this, wishing them more pain in life than they could ever take standing. Then I stop myself every time the rage would manifest with a clenched fist or a crushed paper, and wonder what pain could drive that person to do such thing. It gives me little relief to imagine their life, and towards the end of the day I think I was able to pray that they find something good in life that one day may lead them to not do it again.
Then paranoia set in. I've heard of worse things happening to people, but I couldn't stop myself from thinking, what if someone really used force to break in? What's stopping someone to just break the window and point a gun at me? Or what's stopping someone from walking up to me from behind as I am opening my door? Overnight my fear and paranoia has grown to the extent that all doors and windows are now locked even when I am inside. I miss the cool breeze at night but the alternative scares me so.
So this is how it's to be from now on. Locked doors, closed windows. No wonder people aren't talking to neighbors that much anymore. And also I wonder, had we grown so desperate and poor that petty crimes are just as common and normal as EDSA traffic or pay-day mall-wide sales?
