An Open Letter

Dear Troubled Person/People Who Insist on Attacking My Home:

I used to be a champion sleeper. I would lie in my bed and read a few pages of the book on my nightstand, or solve a few words in a Washington Post crossword puzzle, or work on a Sudoku puzzle, or write a few sentences in my journal, or just listen to a little soothing music. Then I would drift, peacefully, off to sleep. I might wake once to use the bathroom, but then I would immediately fall back to sleep and awaken a minute before my alarm would go off in the morning.

Now all that has changed. I hear every little sound all night long. Every creak in my 84-year-old home makes me think you're trying to come in. Every car that slowly approaches my corner is surely driven by you or your getaway driver. Last night I got up to go to the bathroom at 2:15 and heard someone—surely you—outside my house, talking. It was twenty-some degrees outside. Who would be standing outside at 2:15, talking, in that weather unless he were a "bad guy"?

When my partner leaves in the early morning for work, I lie in my bed—alert to noises, afraid to move, unwilling to walk downstairs—until daylight. Gone are the days when I look forward to morning, to getting up and accomplishing things before the rest of the world rises.

I am so angry at you. I vacillate between wanting to sob and wanting to scream at you. Why have you done this to me? What on earth did I do to you to cause you to want to destroy my life like this?

Last week I was sick all week. On the nights I took NyQuil or cough medicine, I was able to sleep. I don't want to have to resort to taking medication to be able to sleep! I want my peaceful house back—my house where I wasn't afraid to sit in my basement and sew until all hours or to walk to the kitchen in the middle of the night.

Now I just feel like you're watching me all the time, waiting for the next time you're going to throw a rock. Or worse.

We've had to make previously unnecessary expenditures because of your actions. We have spent hundreds of dollars upgrading our security system. We have spent hundreds of dollars repairing broken windows. We cancelled three nights at a Florida resort because of you, and that opportunity is now gone.

But most of all, you have instilled an unnatural and unnecessary fear into me.

Maybe you're done. Maybe those three attacks were all you had intended for me and now you've moved on to some other recreational activity. But I don't know. You've never told me why you're doing it or when you're going to do it, and for all I know, tonight—and tonight, and tonight—is the night you're going to strike me again. So I stay awake, listening.

This entire episode of my life is beyond my realm of understanding. I don't know how to get my sleep patterns back. I don't know how to not feel so sad and so angry.

I can only hope that you're done terrorizing me, and that someday—years from now—you'll look back and say, "What on earth was I thinking? I'm so ashamed of my behavior."

(No, there have been no further attacks beyond the initial three, but the damage to my psyche is done and I'm having a hard time dealing with it.)