if anyone can be arsed to actually read through all of this, i'd appreciate it. this is probably the shittiest thing i've ever gone through - i'm really selling it here, i know!
on tuesday morning at seven am, i got woken up by a police officer in body armour looming over my bed. he informed me that they were arresting my housemate on charges of "indecent images" and that they had a warrant to remove every electronic device with storage from the flat. as my housemate got carted off to the police station i had to sit ther while a team of officers went not only through his, but all of my belongings too, putting everything that could be potential evidence against him into plastic bags. they were nice enough to me, saying that i wasn't in any trouble, but fuck man - it was one of, if not *the* most horrific experiences in my life. they took my computer, all my games systems, everything that had been written to a cd-r or dvd-r, digital cameras - fucking everything.
i work from home and had a stack of laptops that don't even belong to me removed. i'm kind of fucked as far as work goes at the moment and have just taken some time off while i figure out what the fuck is going on. i've been told i won't get any of my stuff back for probably months. games consoles, mobile phones - everything is fucking gone.
oh yeah, despite all the shit i've had to go on behalf of my housemate, i'm really fucking worried for him too. he's been released on bail for twelve weeks, but has no real family to turn to and i think there's only about a 50:50 chance he'll make it to the end of those twelve weeks without killing himself. he's almost certainly facing jailtime for one of the least socially acceptable crimes there is and he can't handle it at all. i've tried to be there for him to the extent that i can be, but it's not easy. i'm making sure to spend some time with him each day and have tried to sort out counseling for him, although he said he won't do it. i've go other friends involved too, which, considering the nature of the crime, are all being incredibly cool about it. i'm not staying at the flat at the moment and have moved back to my parents, because it's all a bit much for me to take in.
on top of all this, he's used my computer, we use the same internet connection and are obviously on the same network. i've stupidly let him use my laptops in the past too. also, i visit the *chans, so god knows what they're going to find in my cache. oh yeah, i had the great pleasure of explaining all of my hydroponics equipment (cannabis growing stuff) to the police too - so they can quite easily collar me on that one. if i dissapear for a while you'll know why!
on the one upside, he bought me a 360 elite and a pile of games on his way back from the police station as means of some kind of apology. it means very little at this stage, but at least i can play gta4 to get my mind off of things.
this really, really fucking sucks.