A Stunning Violation

Everyone has a safe place, a special place, close to their heart. For writers this is, perhaps, even more significant. We find a quiet spot to rap away on keyboards, to scribble in journals. So when these sacred spaces are violated it shakes us to the very core of who we are.

Ahmed bought us a special place the year before last. Tucked in the woods of Maine on a small lake, the vacation home was a retreat that was not a long drive, but felt worlds away from the clamoring crowd. It was a place of peace and contemplation, a beautiful home in which we planned to retire.

When the call came from the local police, and later from the insurance company and friends who live nearby, we were stunned. A group of young people under the influence of psychotropic drugs broke into the house and had a RAVE. The downstairs was destroyed. The antique stove was torn out of the wall. A huge hole was burned in the hardwood floors and the couch-- antique Adirondack furniture that came with the house-- was burned to cinders.

So deep was the violation that neither myself nor Ahmed can face seeing it. We've simply decided to wait til the insurance adjusters and authorities have finished with the investigation.

Ahmed, in a reaction that I now realize is quite typical, was more upset to think that perhaps I, or a female friend, might have been alone in the house on a writer's retreat. What if a lone female had wandered down the stairs to be greeted by a crowd of drugged people bent on destruction? Though this was not my first thought upon hearing about the incident, it will be my last, lingering fear.

Is anyplace safe anymore? Probably not... and our beloved retreat is probably still safer than Cambridge, or even Green Harbor. But I wonder if, thinking about the violation done to that beautiful place, I will ever feel completely safe again.