Someone Broke into My House
And I had nightmares for at least two weeks
This is a story I’ve told very few people, I had nightmares for weeks, and quite frankly, it’s hard for me to relive, but here goes. It must have been around 3am, it was a traditional English winters night, I was fast asleep with my snoring boyfriend next to me. I was woken abruptly by what sounded like someone trying to get into our house. My boyfriend was fast asleep, couldn’t be stirred. I lay there in fear listening to someone attempt to enter our home. But before I tell you anymore, let me go back a few steps.
During my second year of university, I lived in a house with three others, one of whom was my boyfriend Ethan, and two other friends. As university students, our house was of course an old rackety building, with paper thin walls. My two other housemates had plans on the night of the incident, we knew there was no chance they would be coming back that night. We lived on a relatively busy road, and so a bit of foot traffic after a night out wasn’t unusual, but this sound was like nothing I’d heard before, someone was trying to get in.
My first thought was to check my phone to see if I had any missed calls from either housemate but there was nothing. Of course, they wouldn’t be texting me, they were both out of town for the night, and even if they came back, they both have keys. This filled me with fear; if neither of my housemates were trying to get in, then who was?
I rolled over and woke Ethan up, I knew he was a heavy sleeper, but to this day I have no idea how he slept through it. The noise was almost indescribable, the effort that this criminal was making to get in was causing every window in the house to shake. Just as I woke my boyfriend up, the intruder began to shout and it sounded like he was trying to break the door down. For whatever reason, he really wanted to get into our house.
They say in dangerous or stressful situations, a flight or fight response kicks in and Ethan’s response is to fight, to say the least. He shot up out of bed and ran downstairs to confront the intruder without a second thought. I had no idea what to do, so I just got out of bed, stumbled around to find my glasses, and followed him down the stairs. I hid behind the corner of the staircase, listening intently.
Ethan opened the door to confront the trespasser. My heart was beating so fast I could feel it in my throat, my stomach was doing somersaults, and I’m sure Ethan’s was too. My memory of what happened is slightly foggy which I can only imagine is because of all the shock and distress, but the conversation that ensued included a lot of shouting and bad language, from Ethan, but there was not much coming from the intruder, well, anything intelligible anyway. After what felt like a lifetime, but was probably less than a minute, I came out from around the corner to see what was going on, and why this strange man was still in our porch. What I saw when I came around the corner scarred me for life.
I saw an extremely intoxicated, scantily clad young man, and by that, I mean a ridiculously drunk, naked, 20-ish university student. To my surprise, it turned out to be a boy I knew of, he lived in my student house the year before us and had been out with some friends and got himself in a very bad way.
The events that followed were nowhere near as scary as what had just happened; we explained to him that no matter how much he wanted to, he could not come in and go to bed, as he didn’t live in this house anymore. I asked him to explain why he had literally nothing on but a t-shirt and a pair of socks, and he had no idea, in fact it seemed like he hadn’t even realised that he was missing pretty much all of his clothes until I pointed it out.
Anyway, we (my boyfriend) managed to stop him from coming in the house, and sent him on his way to his current home, with an old pair of my boyfriend’s shorts to protect his dignity. I wasn’t lying earlier when I said that it took weeks for the nightmares to stop, but not just because of what happened, but mostly because of what I had to see.
I really have no idea what I would’ve done that night if I was home alone. I quickly realised that I wasn’t in any real danger, but the minute or two that I was awake before my boyfriend was, I was really scared. I can’t thank Ethan enough for protecting me that night, albeit he was only protecting me from a drunken, confused fool.
