Society utterly confuses me

a reply to: Aazadan

When we were in college, we lived next door to my best friend and her husband and dad. Someone broke into their place and stole a houseplant among other things.

There is no rhyme nor reason to it sometimes.

originally posted by: Aazadan
If you've ever read some of my posts you probably know that I'm fairly calm and level headed. While I'm still those things I am shocked, dumbfounded, and utterly frustrated with people.

For some background information, I live in a pretty high crime area. On average you've got about a 1 in 10 chance of being the victim of a break in every year in this town. There's literally not a month that goes by where someone I know hasn't had their home or car broken into. I had been out of town for the past 10 days or so and just got home today and I won the break in lottery. I pulled into my driveway and my heart sunk as I noticed my back door had been bashed in.

Whoever the thieves were, they clearly knew they had a lot of time. Not only were the obvious items taken like my computer and other electronics, but less obvious stuff was taken as well. They took about half my clothes (why they didn't take the other half, I have no idea), the pictures on the walls, and even cheap stuff. Everything from the silverware and plates to the toilet paper was stolen. In addition to taking my stuff, they took a checkbook and cashed out my bank account with it.

The police took a report of course, but told me that there's basically nothing they can do, which I had already known. Once things are stolen they're pretty much impossible to recover.

I'm not one who gets overly attached to things... oddly enough I'm not all that bothered by my stuff being stolen, though I obviously wish it didn't happen. Instead I'm just frustrated, and I'm not sure who it's with. Is it the criminals who are so desperate they even took a half used bar of soap from my shower or is it the police who are supposed to protect me but can't actually do anything?

Maybe I'm being too composed for what just happened, I don't know. But I do know I'm in utter bewilderment at the moment, or perhaps it's just shock. Literally everything aside from my car and the handful of things I was traveling with was just stolen and the thoughts going through my head aren't about the fact that with this I'm basically starting my life over again from step 1, or about how they could easily come back and I have no way to defend myself like I always thought I would be thinking about in this situation. Instead all I can think about is how bad off does society need to be for people to steal such petty items alongside the good ones, and why do we always excuse so much behavior from the police on the basis that we'll be glad they're there when we need them... yet when we could actually use them, there's nothing they can do?

I feel you, man and I'm sorry for your loss. Hopefully, there is a such thing as karma and those vultures are dealt with.