A Season of Thieves

I’ve been a victim of B&E. My apartment was ransacked and most of my gadgets taken even a couple of running shoes and my spikes.

Despite not being home when it happened, it wasn’t easy recovering. The constant paranoia, the unreasonable spike in anger, the violent tendencies. I have a large sword, a baseball bat, mace, a switch blade and a stiletto knife, strategically placed and hidden in my room. I constantly carry a thin long blade, a pen with metal casing and a pen knife where ever I go.

I hurry home at 5am, making the effort to go to work earlier than my shift in order to get home by 5am because of my paranoia.

Often I am glad when my parents visit cause there’s someone at the apartment while my sister and I are out working. Or when my sister’s boyfriend stays the night.

So you can see. I have not recovered. I am still a victim. And it unnerves me that I don’t mind being constantly on the look out, being angry and suspicious of the world.

I wish I could say that I am getting better, and I am seeing the world in a lighter image, that it isn’t such a dark place to live after all. But I don’t.

Recent incident has made it worse. I have friends who just went through the same shit I had or worse. Plus the fact that at least 3 months after the incident I was in a holdup situation on the jeepney I was riding from the bank back to my apartment. I was one of the lucky ones. Nothing was taken from me since I had a thin belt bag where I placed my cell phone and new ATM card and was hidden under my shirt. When the perpetrators asked me to show what’s in my pockets, all I could show them were 3 5-peso coins. The rest of the passengers had their phones taken as well as their wallets a watches.

The really thing that made it worse? The two guys who held us in “knife-point” entered the jeepney and pretended to have a friendly argument then all of a sudden sang a Christmas song, like kids on a caroling spree. Then when everyone was starting to get irritated with the off-tune singing, they held us at knife-point. Fucking hell. Talk about desperate, devastating and a freaking nightmare.

Even now, I have colleagues at work with the same complaint, that theft has been rising. One even commented that you wouldn’t be considered as a resident of the island if you haven’t experienced a B&E. I hate that. That it has become some sort of norm.

I am mad that no resolutions have been available, making me hate cops more.

I am home right now, with Rebel and Tinker. With Tinker barking at anything or anyone passing by our apartment. Yes. Tinker isn’t friendly. Should I decide to have him enroll on a dog training class, I’d enroll him on how to behave during walks and take down people. Dog owners might hate me for this train of thought, but I am glad Tinker isn’t friendly. I’d fucking congratulate him if he ever catches a thief and have the perpetrator bleeding all over the garage when I’d get home so he’d be ripe for some one on one time with my baseball bat.

Violent. Yes. But so is the fucking world.

 

 

Self-imposed Wonderland Backdoor

I watched Narnia: The Dawn Treader movie earlier with my friends: Inda, Riz and Bej.  I’m pretty much into the genre of the movie since I also love the books and well I have to admit I root for Edmund…sorry, King Edmund that is. LOL

I have forgotten how the actual story ended, well the entire 7 books. I might have that as an assignment of some sort. To re-read the books…then watch the 3 movies again. OC much?

Bej commented that she liked the series, so I mentioned the books, which led to the question if I was really into the Fantasy genre and I admitted that yeah, love it a lot. When asked why…well…to be honest…because it’s definitely the farthest (?) or the opposite concept against reality.

People might find my reasons rather…childish? In a way, if I do psychoanalyze myself, it would fall under defense mechanism or delusion. But is it delusion if I am fully aware of the difference between fantasy and reality? Would you consider me mentally unbalanced for my preferences? To choose non-reality? Am I less self aware because of my preferences?

I still don’t watch television nor do I read the newspaper despite my father’s advice that to be aware of current events is the first step in being well prepared in daily interaction with people. I do read, if given that I have nothing else to do or I do pick up the newspaper, but often I go to the sports section before the front page. It’s football so sue me!

Before, I did make the effort to read the newspaper daily. I’d like to say that I stopped because it was an additional expense to buy the newspaper every bloody day. But let’s be honest here…partially (slight) because I barely have the time…and (major major) I got tired of reading how until now we have assholes in the government. If they are not corrupt, they’re idiots. If it’s a person with no “known” scandal everyone presumes he must be an expert at hiding his tracks. If it wasn’t about the circus (government) the news would cover inane scandals and emotional (crap) difficulties of celebrities…like that would solve the country’s poverty.

Although one of my friends says that it’s an outlet that Filipinos need to disassociate themselves from their current reality issues. So who am I to argue, I too have my wonderland backdoor. So each to his own yeah? 

This is my reality and since it’s mine, I made a point that I would take the time to isolate myself from its harshness as often as I could get away with it. Thus I watch Anime over the News. I watch crime series and learn multiple ways of how people die instead of knowing how actual people did die during a day. I read macabre fantasy on niche-worlds with angels and monsters with no moral obligations to humanity instead of listening to how an actual person of good moral background could butcher his own family. I listen to alternative rock songs than to the preaching of someone who admonishes everything about how the country is ran by corrupted officials every night, and yet no action is taken, no resolution, no possible future.

I have a self-imposed wonderland backdoor, what do you have to keep your self from going ape-shit?