How To Avoid Being Robbed

I'm going to tell you a very personal story right now. It doesn't have a happy ending.

My apartment was broken into yesterday while I was at the radio station. It happened between 5am and 2pm, so somebody managed to stroll into my bedroom window and out God knows wherever with a 55" flat screen, a Playstation 4, two laptops, a sound bar, and some other items (some of which don't make sense) in broad daylight.

There is about a 99.98% likelihood I know who did it, and it's basically my own fault.

You see, this wasn't even the first time I was robbed in 2016.

I don't know if you remember my road trip videos from last summer, where we were checking the signal after our transmitter issues:

I had a cameraperson with me, a woman who I portrayed as someone from corporate who was caught playing Angry Birds and as punishment was forced to spend time with me filming my exploits and enduring my scripted abuse and wisecracks.

We went shopping for all-day breakfast and green poop one day too:

I turned the camera around on her when we went to Heart Of Darkness for Halloween:

She wasn't just my cameraperson. She was the only real friend I had in Waterloo, and she was a lot more than that. Lunch dates and weekend getaways together occasionally included me asking her to film me acting like an A-hole so I can put it on the station's YouTube channel. If she wasn't enjoying it she didn't say anything, and she certainly didn't act that way.

We split up about seven weeks ago. She had a major medical emergency -- I was the one who took her to the emergency room so I know it was serious -- and after that everything changed. I'm not going to go into too many of the details for her sake, but she's going through a rough patch and is a different person now, like the "old her" is gone, and mutual friends have even noticed it and feel like I have had my girlfriend taken from me. All I wanted was to take care of her. She's still a caring and compassionate woman though, she still tolerates a tremendous amount of my garbage even today and is concerned about how hurt I am because I did nothing to make her feel this way and because I still love her. She has spent her adult life always being someone else's ___________ that she never got to figure out who she was as an individual.

(Some of you may know her or recognize her. This is the part where I ironically ask you to please respect her privacy.)

I'm still in shock over the whole thing to be honest, and there are some day where an entire day's worth of energy is spent just on the morning show, which leaves me a zombiefied mess the rest of the day.

She has a daughter who was living with her, and the daughter has had some troubles with the law. So has the daughter's boyfriend, who basically moved in a few months ago. I figured he was either in love like I was, or he was a mooch. Either way, me and him were always cool.

The daughter would keep in contact with me after the breakup, needing things for her and for the house every now and then, because I was always there for her and her mom and I said I always would be (which was the truth). It was nice to be needed, it was nice because I never had a daughter and this whole time it was like having one, it was a connection to her mom somehow, and it's hard for me to let go of what we had. She would also occasionally put in a good word for me, and give me updates on how she's doing. So I'd loan her money, so she wouldn't have to do anything she'd end up regretting to get it, which benefited her and her mom. After feeling like I was robbed of someone I was close to, I was clinging to this, maybe a little too much.

Over the weekend, the daughter ran into some legal trouble, and I got sucked right into the middle of it. The boyfriend was asking me for help, which I couldn't do. I was also specifically asked not to help the daughter out by her mom, and I said I'd abide by her wish. I was also told to "lock my doors" because the boyfriend it turns out has a record and he's wanted for a lot of stuff and she didn't want anything to happen to me.

My exact response via text: "I'm not worried about any of that s--t. I'm more worried about you."

I really wasn't worried, because I had done a bunch of things for the daughter and the boyfriend and thought there was no way.........I also figured I had already lost the only thing in this town I truly gave a rat's ass about and I really didn't care about anything else. I was also more worried about her than I was me. I was also trying to come off as manly.

Then yesterday happened. If today's morning show sounds like I didn't get any sleep it's because I didn't. My apartment was ransacked, especially the bedroom where whoever came in through the window. I tried to sleep on the couch in the living room, and when that didn't work I tried the floor. Some stuff that wasn't stolen was taken to the crime lab to check for fingerprints.

So the moral of the story is, guard everything like it'll break at any second. Cherish everything like you're going to lose it. Don't be so trusting. And get renters insurance.