I'm ..very paranoid ..about somone breaking in..is this normal?

I live on an isolated piece of ground in the country, in a house that was broken into 3 times when the previous owners had the place. I've had strangers knock on the door and ask for directions at 3am, and another, who was fishing down the road a ways, show up asking for a drink of water.

I gave directions to the tweakers and gave the guy who asked for it...a drink of water.

Like most country dwellers in the Midwest, I have enough firearms on hand to protect myself and my family. Like a fire-extinguisher, I'll never need them...but if I do, they're available. Even my nine-year-old daughter, who's never home alone, would be able to defend herself against a 200+ lb man if circumstances required.

I take comfort knowing that I can help people who need it without worrying about being attacked.

To answer your question...yes it's normal. Especially given your history, but you don't need to live like that.

Of course you should be aware of the risk, but it's not normal to be paranoid about it.

I've always learned there are two types of burglars. There are those who specifically break in at places where they know something very valuable is, and they come exclusively for that. It doesn't matter how hard you make it for them, if they want to enter they'll enter anyway. And there are those who break in to the house that is the easiest to break in to and then see what they find. If you make it too difficult for them to break in they'll skip your house and move on to the next.

So the first thing you want to question yourself is do you have anything valuable in the house? Any expensive paintings, large amounts of money, jewelery, you name it. If so, you should apply extra security and constantly be aware of burglars. But if not, just put a few safety lockers on the doors and windows and maybe a security strip on the door and that should be enough.

I've never been broken into and I still did this, probably will sometime in the near future because through some mix of events and some lack of faith that particular night, I will check just to make sure. You shouldn't feel that bad about it.