Platypus magnet

Violated.

When people are victims of a crime, this is often the term they use to describe it. It's pretty accurate...and pretty skin-crawling. But what do you use to intensify that adjective? What describes the feeling when someone you trust and love commits a crime against you?

Being a person with chronic pain, I'm on a lot of meds. Every week I lay out a tray of almost 14 different kinds of meds for all kinds of reasons. I keep all of my meds in a huge Ziploc bag in the bottom center cubby of a 3 by 3 (9) cubby shelf that it inches away from the lazyboy chair I spend most of the day in. I rarely leave the house, travel and walking and even mundane things tiring me easily. I prefer to sit and type and enjoy my friends and fans on the internet, to write, to read, to watch movies. Before my foster daughter came along, I was as hermit-like as it got.

You see, I don't mix well with people. It's not that I don't trust anyone...it's that I don;t trust myself to choose the right people. Sometimes it looks like a duck, sounds like a duck, walks like a duck...and its a platypus. Those are the ones I always seem to find.

I am apparently a platypus magnet. I always seem to find the wolf in a perfectly tailored sheep's costume. Have you ever felt that way? That's how I feel today. That's how I felt yesterday when I went to dole out my medications and while sorting through them lifted out a bottle of narcotics, something I use only in crisis as prescribed, that had eight pills left in it.

Last week it had had over 200. A second bottle of a different narc had also been drained all but dry. At first I was baffled. I usually lock my doors. I almost never leave. Only two trusted people have keys to my house. Only these two trusted people would know where I kept them. It swiftly occurred to me that one of these two had utterly betrayed me. A friend, someone I leave my child with all the time, someone I have loaned money to without conditions...been a friend to...cared deeply for...someone who had violated me.

Nothing else is missing...so far. All jewelry accounted for. I don't own much of value otherwise. So, I conclude this was a very specific target. Someone went directly for the meds, left the bottles and, apparently, cared enough to leave enough for me in case of an emergent crises.

How touching.

So, having a child inexorably draws me out of my hermitage and into the path of people. And of all those people, I once again go straight for the platypus. The wolf. And once again my trust is devoured and regurgitated back in my face. And yet because I did not witness the crime and I have no solid proof, I cannot confront the suspect and I cannot help but be torn between the love I formed for this person and the utter belief that they were the only one out of the two with motive and opportunity.

You see, the one day I went out last week was Sunday. As I was leaving I spoke on the phone with this friend and we laughed because she was just arriving at my apt. complex (where she lives as well) and I hadn't even seen her go by. She asked where I was going. I said to the tattoo parlor for another three hours of work. Many of you know how excited i am about the mural of art I am creating on my back. So did she. And just like that I had told her exactly how long I'd be out of my house and to please, be so kind as to go into my home and steal from me. Break my heart. Devastate my trust. Make me feel violated and stupid. Stupid for once again falling for the tricks of the platypus who acts utter loyal, truthful, trustworthy...at least on some levels...and went chinks start appearing in that trust in tiny flecks in other ways I forgive and forgive and forgive because I WANT to believe the best of someone I have chosen to love.

I want to be a good person. A forgiving soul. I want to be like my true best friend Laura who sees so much in her optimistic perspective...and it makes her such a bright and happy being. Not always of course...she is human and has her moments...but they are oh so rare and I want so badly to be as warm and beautiful as she is, as forgiving and faithful as she is, as trusting and understanding as she has been for every single year of our 15 plus years of friendship. She's a duck. No doubt about it. A true duck through and through.

So now I gather all my keys back, lock up my jewelry and meds in the safe, the passports, the SS cards, my heart, my trust, my faith...all of it.

What would you do?