Feeling vulnerable

A lot of big, emotional things have been going on around here lately. Not in our family, but just in general. Between the weirdness around feeling unsafe at home, the fire last week, and my friend dying in a car crash, it's just been an odd, uneasy time.

Went to the friend's funeral. He was just a year older than me and fell asleep while driving late at night. I have never been to a funeral of someone who died young and tragically. We packed the tiny church with about 400 people. I'm sure his family were shocked by the outpouring of love from so many people. I didn't intend to cry my eyes out - to be honest I didn't know him that well - but of course the cocktail of religious songs and verses, other people crying, and thinking about one of my boys dying before me, made me break down. I feel like as a mother of small children that death is at the door all the time - only just now am I able to sleep (if you can call it that) apart from Theo; even with the monitor right by my head I still live in terror of something happening in the night. I know much of this comes from past trauma - loss, abandonment - but I also know this is normal for most parents. I try not to live in the what ifs because that's not a good place to be, but every night I worry that Theo will not make it through the night, and every day I drop B at school I worry that something will happen and I'll never see him again. There, I said it. I worry about losing them all the time. 

It doesn't help that we had yet another weird incident here at the house last night - the kids were in bed and I was watching TV, it was just past 8 PM and there was a knock at my door. I look out and there's a young guy there, who immediately launches into this spiel about wanting to get my name, address, and phone number so someone can call me and sell me a newspaper subscription - but they also need proof of ID from me, preferably in the form of a canceled check. He just rambled on and on while I tried to figure out how to get rid of him - I didn't open the door, but didn't want to piss him off, either. When he finally stopped and asked if I wanted to participate I said, "sorry, no, sorry," and then ran into the kitchen until I heard my front gate close. I googled the scenario - the whole needing a canceled check BS - and sure enough found this is a common scam, although one friend of mine said that she actually did this once and the guy was in fact legit.

But I feel very vulnerable. Between the guy poking around up here a couple of weeks ago, now this kid, even the fire the other night - I just feel like something is up in the neighborhood, like we're being targeted. Now, I could just be overreacting - it's not like this was the first supposed high school kid who's come to my door asking me to help them earn money for college - but it just puts me on edge. Can people please stop coming up the three flights of stairs to my house and leave me in peace? Even better, can people stop pretending they're not criminals trying to hurt me? Or at least not pick on the totally broke and stressed out single mother of two little kids and mess with someone who has the support system to handle being messed with???

I'm going to call the cops again tomorrow (called last night but was put on hold for an eternity) to just tell them what's been happening and see if we can get some cruisers over here or something. Whatever this dark cloud around here is will probably pass eventually, but man, the sooner, the better!