by Melanie Lowe

Created on: November 27, 2008

I've always loved our house. The minute I walked through the door I felt a peaceful energy emanating from the beautiful pressed ceilings right down to the wooden floors and everything in between. It was home before we even made it home. We spent months decorating, making it an extension of us and it truly has become a part of us; our first home together, a safe haven from anything that would harm us. How is one supposed to feel, then, when it suddenly betrays you and you realise the illusion of safety that you had created, was, in fact, just that; an illusion.

It really is peculiar how things can change in a heartbeat. One minute you're getting ready for bed after a long day, the next you're sitting with an ice-pack on your face and fear leaking from every pore in your body and no amount of warmth can stop the shaking.

Daylight brings a false sense of security but you realise that too, is an illusion, when one small, unexpected noise sends your heart rate through the roof and your breathing suddenly comes in short, desperate gasps.

You try to fill your day with mundane tasks. You find, for some reason, that if you stop doing those things, and you have a moment without activity, your mind has too much time to form thoughts that you don't want in your head right now.

You try checking your emails or making your way through the work you've been putting aside or reading a book or a magazine, and suddenly your throat begins to close and your eyes well up and you're crying for no apparent reason. How do you explain away crying over an article about "foods to aid digestion"? There's no logical explanation for it and you feel like a fool but that doesn't make it stop.

You used to have no problem with being on your own. Now, suddenly, the silence is threatening, every dark corner seems menacing, every sudden noise brings tears to your eyes and you start finding excuses to not be in your house. Anything to be away from your thoughts, anything to try and escape from the danger, you feel certain, is lurking just around the corner.

The freedom I took for granted is gone; freedom to move from room to room casually and without thought, freedom to laugh, to relax, to be at peace in my own space. I'm not sure when anything will feel the same again. You secured my insecurity in one single moment. If I could summon hatred for you maybe I could find enough anger in me to get past the fear, but I can't get past the fear and I hate what you've made me FEEL, but I can't hate someone I don't even know.

YOU don't know me... and yet you clearly hate me, or you hate the person you perceive me to be. Maybe I do have a degree... Who told you musicians don't? Who told you they're stupid? Who told you that you're better than me, smarter than me? Your degree didn't make you smart enough to hit me where you wouldn't mark me. Maybe you're a failed musician... Are you that insecure? Is that the reason for your hatred? I want to understand. How much hatred does one have to feel to attack someone they don't know, in their own home, for reasons that make no sense? I don't care how much you dislike someone, violence is not a solution. When you turn to violence, you have crossed a line. Once you cross that line you will keep finding excuses to do it again, and again, and again.

But I can assure you, it won't be on our watch. Never again. That will be the last time you get to test those fists in my vicinity, on myself or my partner.

We've always loved our house.

I will not let you take that from us.

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