To the a-holes who broke into my house last month:

I am filled with righteous anger to such a degree that it is completely consuming me. It's totally beyond my comprehension why people think it's okay to go into other people's houses. I want to believe that you chose to do this to me because you were starving and desperate to feed your family, because our society failed you to such a degree that you felt you had no other choice, instead of the more likely scenario, which is that you did this because you need to fuel your drug addiction.

The loss of my stuff isn't really the issue. They're just things, replaceable material possessions that have no true meaning. A computer, a television.

The fact that you stole my pillowcase is what is fueling my rage. It's inconsequential to you, merely a handy, bag-like apparatus to carry your loot in.

But to me, really, it's deeper than that.

Humans are in such a vulnerable state when they sleep that their beds are supposed to be a safe haven, a sacred space.

You went into my sacred space without my permission, put your hands all over my things, left traces of your presence all over everything, so that every time I look at my pillow, stripped bare, I'll remember that someone whose face I'll never see touched it, defiled it.

Common sense and experience tells me that time will dull my sense of having been violated.

I'm trying to be a good person here. I'm trying not to wish the same thing upon you, but if we're being completely honest, I hope someone else violates your life the way you've done mine.

I wrote this after someone broke into the house where I live with my roommates. I came home to find a side window open, and several of our valuable possessions gone. The material possessions are inconsequential, but the life experience of having to file a police report and have them dust for fingerprints is one that I'd rather not have. My anger has subsided since I wrote this, fading into merely an intense annoyance paired with an odd sadness at the ordeal rather than uncontrollable rage. Merely the writing and publishing of this post has been both helpful and therapeutic for me.