Unsafe

*prick*

the safe bubble of the world i grew up was shattered when i was 16. bad things have happened before and always will be, but it never occured to me that they would hit close to home.

it was about 6 in the morning. it was still quite dark. my brother, like the dutiful son he always is, opened the back door to light the incense at the altar outside. he spotted a dark figure, peering into the window of our bathroom. my mom was just out from the bathroom while i already went in, getting ready for school. my brother alerted my mother. i heard loud shouts coming from Mimmy, like she was shooing a dog away. and the peeping tom ran away.

i cannot see anything outside from the bathroom (our windows are glazed - is that the word?), which is why i am convinced he cannot see anything that morning. but that doesn't quell my fear. the peeping tom's act doesn't scare me as much as the fact that i feel so unsafe in my own home. for the longest time, i would stare at the bathroom window, just to make sure that no one's there. the only reprieve that year was at a camp; the bathrooms are all on the first floor.

ever since then, a few things have hit closer to home. some punks on motorbikes went around molesting girls. a group of scumbags attempted to kidnap a friend's brother. all this happened in the residential area where i still live. and just now, i received news of a rape-murder case in the very town i grew up in. a 16 year-old girl was found naked and dead in a drain in an oil palm estate. and to think that hours before her death, she was attending tuition classes in town - just like any other high schooler.

we would always remember the exact moment, the exact manner in which our safe bubble of a world disappears. it is the feeling of being unsafe, being unprotected that scares the daylight out of me - not the perpetrator, not the crime itself.

despite the bad things, we all move on but that doesn't mean we forget.

PS: dear friends, please take care of yourselves. be on high alert always and always. LOVE YOU ALL.

to the scumbags/lowlife/jerks/criminals out there, you all deserve to die. not the poor girl lying dead in the drain.

PPS: when i get my own house, i will make sure there's a bathroom on first floor. peeping toms can come if they dare, 'cos i hope they will fall down and die!