My Lonesome Place

After reading ‘The Lonesome Place,’ I felt a somewhat personal connection to a place that I too have become fearful of. When I was six years old, my family and I had gone to visit family over Christmas break, immediately after our own family traditions of opening presents and eating hot-crossed buns early in the morning. After we opened all of our presents and got ready for our trip, we left the house and were all very excited to see the rest of the family.

Once arriving in Arizona, we enjoyed family time, laughed over many dinners, and even got more presents from our grandparents. After a week of a perfect vacation, we headed back to New Mexico and came back to our house…only to find it had been broken into. My dad made me stay in the garage while he checked the house to make sure no one was in the house, and finally I walked in, devastated to find that all of my Christmas presents were gone. Six year old me was a mess. Good bye Christmas!

After the police came, we were informed that the small window in my bathroom was the way that the burglars had gotten in, which has left an everlasting pit in my stomach. To this day, I am fearful to go into the bathroom for fear of someone being right outside, waiting to break in. There is a constant moving shadow of the big oak tree in my back yard that resembles a creepy hand lingering over the window.

My parents don’t understand why I don’t like going to that bathroom during the night, or why I walk swiftly down the hallway. I move past the bathroom, just to avoid seeing the tree shadow pass over the window, bringing back fearful images of men in my house, taking all of my Christmas presents, and even all the money in my piggy bank.

For me, the bathroom, but specifically the small window in the bathroom, is my ‘lonesome place,’ and will always remain a place of fear for me.