The day I became a hikikomori

XXIII

I still need therapy, but I haven't done anything about it. What a surprise?

Yesterday, I was at the store—I've been working there full shift since my sister-in-law delivered her baby—and two guys came up. First I thought nothing about it when they were watching the clearance table we got in the front of the store, to attract customers. They were silent, and practically they were messing them around—nothing out of the ordinary—but one of them grabbed one and put his hand down, exactly behind a counter. I couldn't see the figure, but I was watching him. He then put it back with its pile, and both came over me. Now, I don't know if I've said this before, but the store is like a hallway, and I'm at the other end, so they walked towards me and asked me for the price of the rest of the Funkos, which are covering one of the hallways' walls. At that moment, I thought it was odd that they were asking for that when they didn't bother to glance at those figures. Normally, a customer interested in those takes their time looking at all the shelves or at least the ones they are interested in. When someone walks past them at towards me is when I get a little uncomfortable—they either want to ask me for something else, they want to sell me something or they are begging for money.

I then said it depended on which figure they wanted, but I gave them an estimate of the regular pieces, which are the most I have. At that moment, one got a little excited and whispered something to the other guy. This was another red flag for me bc customers normally talk in a regular voice, they have normal conversations and discussions about buying a Funko. I don't listen or understand everything they say—I don't really care tbh—but they don't whisper. You only whisper when you don't want other people to hear you—me, in this case.

Needless to say, I was a little worried at that moment. Then the other guy asked me when I closed the store, I told him that, and they left.

I've been overthinking that encounter for over a day, especially when some months ago an optometrist got mugged in his office, which is almost in front of the store. The police came, asked me if I saw or heard anything—which I didn't—and if the cameras I have installed worked. At that moment they weren't connected—they were there when we started working here—so I told them that. I didn't want to asked the optometrist or the receptionist anything bc that was probably traumatic for them—I wouldn't want any noisy neighbors asking for that if I was them—but I could bet they were armed or something.

After that, I reinstalled the cameras, and they work.

But I don't have access to their recordings. The one who has it is my uncle—the one who installed the cameras and used the place before us. Now, he's a really, really hard person to contact, and I don't want to bother him except its really necessary—my family likes to make a big deal of everything.

Maybe we should install our own security system. But we would need to talk to him first, and he would probably feel excluded or even offended bc the place is practically his.

Maybe I should contact him to see what we could do about that.

Anyway, I know there's a big chance those guys weren't planning to mug me or rob the store or anything. Maybe they didn't want to intercept me when I was closing the store so they could threat me with a gun or something and take everything they could. Maybe I'm being paranoid.

I hope I'm being paranoid.

I really, really do.

But there was a crime really near my store.

And my dad got mugged a few years ago.

So, I was really worried when those guys left. The first thing I thought was to close a little earlier that day.

After like 10 or 15 minutes or overthinking that I closed the store—one hour before actual closing time—and left.

At home I told my sister what happened, and she didn't say anything. She probably thought that was nothing and I was exaggerating—maybe I was and maybe I am.

I then left to look for some stuff I needed—I'm going on vacation with my siblings, and then we're traveling to another place to get my dad knee surgery. I tried to use that time to distract myself, but I couldn't. I overthought what happened time and time again, convincing myself more and more they definitely wanted to rob me or something. I wanted to contact my uncle to ask him if I could see the camera records at the closing time, just to make sure if they came back or not, but he would start making questions, and all my family would know, and it would be a bigger deal than if needs to.

And what if they actually came back at that time, what if they actually wanted to rob me. What would I do with that information?

I barely could sleep last night. I was wondering what would happen if they had actually robbed me. Yes, I was thinking about the money I'd lose, and how I've been struggling to grow my inventories and earnings—how hard would it be to recover from that—but I was terrified about how it would affect me. I'm terrified to close at closing time rn if they decide to come back. I even bought some pepper spray to at least feel a little safer.

So, with that in mind, how would I react to an actual robbery? What would I do with the memory of someone threating me with a weapon?

It would really traumatize me.

I'd need therapy asap.

But... what would I do next? I don't think I'd even want to open the store once again. What would I do with all those figures any other seller has? There are lots of bigger stores which can sell them cheaper than me, so I only have them to sell them in the store—must customers there aren't collectors, so they aren't looking for a particular Funko but the cheapest version of the characters they like.

That means in order to sell those figures, I had to sell them even cheaper that everyone else, probably losing money in the process.

I'd get back to selling online only, which is not as profitable as it was before. I'm earning not that much more I did when I started like that.

But I had to cling to that, even thought I still have a couple years of debt to pay.

Anyway, I'll close the store soon—yes, early again, so I could go jogging a little bit and get back home early to pack everything and go to sleep. I don't think I'll keep writing this while I'm gone, and I'd probably forget to continue after that.

But there's so much more I wanted to talk about.

I didn't even touch on the subject I really wanted to.

Well, I hope I'll do it when I get back.

I'm sure I'll think a lot about it in the next days.

Bye for now.