A lot of people said,
“There’s probably another explanation.”
“Could anything else have happened to it?”
“Maybe it’s just misplaced.”
But it was in that box. Inside another box, in my closet, next to my socks. And my house has never been broken into. What other conclusion am I supposed to draw?
There isn’t any. Someone I know took my great grandmother’s engagement ring.
I filed a police report. Durham PD has a detective who does nothing but pawn shop investigations. He’s very good, I was told by a clerk at National Pawn as I peered into their jewelry case. The investigator asked for a photo. I didn’t have a photo. I drew a picture, added details from the 1998 appraisal I had in my files, and emailed it to him.
I haven’t heard anything.
I didn’t expect to, really. I can’t imagine a friend or acquaintance taking it for the money. I don’t have destitute people as guests in my home (though I don’t like what that says about me). Years ago, a woman in my therapy group shared about her shoplifting compulsion. It wasn’t that she needed to—she had plenty of money—and she clearly knew better, but she had a pathology. I assume it’s the same in this case.
Speaking of pathology, my mind is doing weird things.
The day after I wrote the last post, I let the dogs in and found myself standing at the door unable to move. I stared at the door jamb and, in the middle of the day on a Sunday with my two pit bulls at my feet in a house where I’ve never felt unsafe, flipped the lock on the knob and threw the deadbolt.
In a fit of “Do I really trust who I trust?”, I changed the password on all my protected blog posts.
And I keep having fantasies of the ring’s return. Of a friend coming to me, crying and sheepish, to confess. Of finding an anonymous package in my mailbox. Of the detective calling and saying, “It turned up at the Picasso on Roxboro and Club.” And yes, of finding it in my laundry basket and having to eat crow. I would gladly eat crow. But it’s not in my laundry basket. It would’ve had to slither out of the box, that was inside the other box, in my closet, next to my socks.
Maybe this experience hasn’t changed me. When a friend asked if he could invite two new acquaintances to my New Year’s Eve party, I said yes without any hesitation. Is that because I still believe in people, love people, want to know people? Or is it because I literally have nothing else to lose? There’s literally nothing else anyone could take from my house that means anything to me.
I guess that’s not true. If someone took the dogs, I’d lose my fucking mind.
So there’s that. I have my dogs.
Dogs are the best. They have so few pathologies.
I can definitely vouch for the fact that experiences like this can totally change your perspective. For the most part, I had always lived alone – and in the past some pretty rough parts of DC and MD. It never, ever occurred to me (possibly in the naivety of my youth) that being violated in terms of personal possessions would ever happen to – or impact me. But when my place in Durham got very creepily broken into and robbed, the loss of a sense of security and trust was even worse than the loss of any of my material possessions. Granted, I didn’t have anything as truly important as this taken. But it has changed me forever in terms of my ability to feel truly secure. It has also made me appreciate that I have a bad ass girlfriend with a security system on the house and a deer knife under the mattress.