Broken Windows
“He* came in through the bedroom window.” Sounds like a Beatles song. Very catchy… except that it was my bedroom window and he had to break it to get in. There’s glass all over my bed and floor. At first, that’s all I can see. Broken glass. The Beatles melody keeps spinning around and around my brain like an old 45 rpm record on a turntable. But right now, I don’t feel like dancing. I feel like screaming. I feel like beating something or someone to a bloody pulp. Tears stream down my face.
Minutes later, I notice that my laptop computer, and with it, the backup disk with the only complete copy of my book, has been stolen. I had just finished Chapter 11. Piercing sounds replace the Beatles’ melody in my head and I realize that I am screaming. I can’t believe that this has happened. I am a bomb that’s about to go off any second. Someone stole my book, and I can’t stop screaming. In this instant, I have no ego, no mind, no inner witness, and no emotional distance. I am my pain. I have slipped over the edge. I don’t even care if the neighbors can hear me.
Once I calm down, I notice a third wave of violation. The contents of my jewelry case are spread across the top of my dresser. My drawers and closets have been ransacked. An empty bank envelope lays crumpled on the floor. My thoughts focus on the fact that a stranger has touched my panties. It’s as if invisible hands are going over my body without my consent, and I feel dirty and gross. I feel like I am being watched, and I have the urge to crawl out of my skin.
The break-in renders me passive and afraid. I have no one to focus my rage or tears on except the holes left in my life. It’s very hard to yell at an absence. By breaking into my bedroom, rifling through my panties and stealing my words, someone has shattered my privacy, my sense of emotional safety. They crossed boundary after boundary. It doesn’t matter that rationally I know that whoever did this probably doesn’t care about my underwear, my poetry, or my book. The “evidence” suggests that the burglar was only looking for money and small portable things to pawn.
Of course most extreme reactions are based on not just the current situation, which is often traumatic in itself, but also on some painful experience from the past. As a crisis counselor, I know this, but it takes me three days recognize the fact that I am not just reeling from the present invasion, but also from “forgotten” wounds from the past.
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