You know when something happens and you feel partially responsible for it even happening? You feel angry – but then there is this knot of guilt that makes the sadness kind of turn into a … a knot. The knot just sits there in your stomach and every time you feel like crying about it – the knot rears its ugly head once more.

I left my ipod – a gift from a dear friend of mine for my last bday – sitting in the i-trip doc in my car. My car was in front of my house – under a street light – where it sat undisturbed for more than 12 hours. This afternoon, however, my luck runneth out-eth. A lucky bastard saw fit to smash the window on the passenger side of my brand new car (almost – only a year old), lean in thru the window and snatch both ipod and doc from their cozy home and run away with it, probably not even taking another thought.

I live in a nice neighborhood. It’s not Minnesota – and I’ve lived there for a bit of my life – but it’s nice. It’s a quiet neighborhood where kids play in the street and skateboard to the park and walk their dogs – and wash their cars in their driveways. It’s a neighborhood where we all know one another – and even though we’ve had our little disagreements over constantly barking dogs in the middle of the morning – or people taking our spot under the coveted tree during 102 degree summers – it’s relatively a norman rockwell sort of painting. Nothing bad ever happens here. No police raids – no helicopters flying over head. No gang activity or tagging or … break ins. Even though I have an alarm on my car – I rarely ever use it. I just haven’t thought of it as necessary. Until today.

I saw the window from the doorway. I looked at my car and thought to myself that a bird might have shat on it or something. Something was hanging on the window and as I stepped towards my car I realized that it was bits of little honeycombed pieces of glass – hanging from the rubber seal or whatever it is called. I looked inside knowing instantly what they had been after – and what they had unfortunately recieved. You know – as the day went on – I wasn’t even upset about that fuckin ipod. I really wasn’t. I was upset at the fact that my damn window was gone. I was upset that now I had to think about my whole “life” being exposed for someone to just walk in and touch my belongings – and that someone actually had. My window is but a fraction of the cost of the ipod – but I seriously did not even care about it. The day wore on – I had to go to work – and all thru work I kept thinking about my car in the parking lot – minus a window. A kind policeman came to my work and I couldn’t even get excited about him. That pissed me off too – because he was certainly very attractive. As he sat down and took the report – I kept telling him that I didn’t care about the Ipod. I knew I wasn’t getting it back. I cared about my window. I wanted to get it replaced as soon as possible. I wanted all that glass cleaned up. I wanted to drive down the street and not hear the evidence of the crime dropping into my damn door. I wanted to sit in my car – place my purse on the passenger seat – and go about my business. Instead, here I was, not disturbing the “evidence”. I felt like – I felt like the glass on the seat of my car and the missing window was some indication of what I had done wrong. I felt ashamed. I felt like I was to blame for even thinking I could leave something so valuable in my car and not have it taken. WTF.

All through work I talked about that damn car. I heard that there had been several robberies in the area – even a bank had been robbed earlier that morning. A house had been broken into – and several cars had been vandolized through out the day. Our little safe neighborhood wasn’t so safe after all. When it came time to close I realized just how freaked out I had become. It was nighttime now – and maybe the people would be back to gloat at their work. I know it seems silly and dramatic as hell. I know it does. But I still felt like they would be back to do more to my car. Maybe this time they would take the whole car. Maybe they would scratch it – or maybe they would …

I manned the alarm. I went inside. I started to cry. I attempted to get out of my funk. I thought about it as a life lesson – about how much worse off it could be. But nothing quite worked, ya know? I would start to think about something else – and then I just felt bad again. I even spoke to my friend NAKA and laughed for a bit – but when the conversation shifted I felt … all pissed off again. Maybe I just was in a funk and determined to feel lousy (???) – I don’t know. But we fought a bit. If I had been near him, I think I would have shrugged off any attempts he made to touch me. I felt like here I was – a good kid – hadn’t done anything wrong – and I was being punished, I felt, for something. I know it’s not attractive to be in victim-mode – but I just wanted to feel badly for a minute and I was sure that no one else in the whole entire world felt as lousy as I did at that moment and damn it – I wanted a ribbon or badge or something! (lol). For every, “it could be worse” comment I got today I felt like saying – “this IS worse for me!” for every “well at least…” I heard I wanted to scream loudly, “THIS ISN’T LEAST!!!” I don’t care if the person who took my shit had an addiction and couldn’t stop himself because he needed some dope. I don’t care if he was mistreated as a young kid and raped by his fuckin priest and was acting out on some post traumatic type shit. I wouldn’t care if his wrong decision or moment of insanity landed him in jail where he couldn’t talk to his girlfriend anymore and his mother felt so bad that she had a heart attack and landed in the hospital and was on life support. HE SHOULDN’T OF FUCKED WITH MY SHIT – point blank. period. End of fuckin story. I was enraged. It took me all day to realize it – but I was PISSED. I was hurt – pissed – and didn’t believe that I would ever feel better until I had my shit back. Fuck empathy and life lessons learned. I fought with NAKA – something that didn’t make me feel half as good as I thought it might.

When the time came in to check in with Doc – something in me finally broke free. I finally let it go. I told him about how I felt guilty. How I had asked for it. How stupid I had been. How I wanted my things back. How they didn’t belong to the person who had taken them. How dare they??!!! I work hard for my things. I know that life is hard and tough and blah blah blah – I know that there are SEVERAL things that I WANT but I can’t afford to get – or can’t get right now – or whatever. Don’t you think that sometimes I’m tempted to just take shit too? If I didn’t have that little bit of guilt inside of me – I could walk into a store and just take a outfit here or take an outfit there. I would go to the corner and buy a damn lap top off of someone knowing full well that it was probably stolen, too. I like nice things. I feel ENTITLED sometimes to have them – I mean – fuck – I’m human. But I don’t do things like that to other people. Partially because I know with my luck I would get caught and it would be nothing like the fantasies I imagine. But also because I know that it would hurt someone and I just don’t have it in me to be that fuckin mean and heartless. And trust me – I’ve had people in my life that deserve that type of treatment. It was when I was going thru the actual pain of losing something that meant so much to me that my friend stepped in and did something that he is known to do over and over and over again for me.

He bought me another Ipod to replace the one he had given me just one year ago.

He picked up the bill and he paid it. He paid the price for my lack of judgement – and for some asshole’s lack of …guilt, maybe? Discernment? I don’t know what. And then he said, “Now you can stop crying…” At first I cried more – just because his never ending kindness does that to me. But finally the tears stopped. I started to feel not so “shamed”.

I have a busy couple of days a head of me – but there is no doubt that by Monday Morning I can put all of this behind me. My window will have been replaced. Fingerprints will have been dusted for. My car will have been wiped clean by a great car detailing place down the way. This too shall pass. And in a few days I’ll have in my hands an even bigger Ipod than the one that was taken from me. Scratch free. And I will never leave it unattended in my car again.

So I need to apologize. I’m really sorry, NAKA for being so deeply affected by all of this that I couldn’t let you in to even comfort me. I had to fight and be angry for awhile – and it was not fair for me to not tell you what it is that I needed. I should have just sat with it for awhile instead of making you take the full force of my anger. You told me that one day I might laugh about this – and I treated you like you told me that one day I’d enjoy the taste of shit. Maybe it was just too soon for me to hear all that – but I can not fault you for wanting to make me feel better – especially when you had all kinds of other things to deal with in your life. I know that if I had asked you to help me in any way – you would have… no questions asked.

Doc told me that maybe one day I can make this into a fantasy. I kind of thought about it and shook my head. But down inside of me there was a bit of a twinge. Due to 2 great friends and their listening ears and their almost-annoying-at-times optimism – a window inside of me started to break. Words started coming together and forming sentences and though I can’t quite go there – I know that I will turn even this gross example of human nature and life’s lessons into a fantasy that I can enjoy.

Maybe not today.
But soon.