I have a downstairs neighbor who has had it in for me since the moment I moved in. I have never done anything mean, or willfully intending to harm her or cause her misery, and yet she insists that I am constantly doing just that.
Over the time I have lived here, she has called the local police on me several times complaining about noise. One of those times, the police knocked on my door while I was in bed. Imagine me coming to the door to greet the police at 10:40pm in my jammy pants, and they telling me that they were responding to a complaint about a loud banging noise. Yes folks, I was doing late night carpentry just before I went to bed, but abruptly stopped and ran into the bedroom as soon as I saw the squad car out in front of the building. Are you effing kidding me!!!
Anyway, my life in the proximity of this miserable person has gone on too long. It has been toxic from the beginning, but my skin is thick, so I have managed for a long time. It won't be much longer though. I need quality of life, and I simply don't have it under these circumstances.
The latest episode:
I got up late this morning, and had to hurry to get out the door and over to the place where I meet my friends for our weekend run. In a rush, I ran to my car, passing this woman along the way as she was walking her dogs (and not saying a word to her, mind you). I jumped in my car quickly, turned the ignition, and started to back out of the parking spot I was in. Almost instantly I heard a violent scream "Heyyyyyyyyyyyy, HEYYYYYYYYYYY!!!" Despite seeing that I was in a hurry and would probably be pulling out quickly, this lovely person had taken her dogs directly behind my car and was just lolling along in her usual slo-mo pace (she is an immense woman, so can only go so fast). Seeing and hearing her, I quickly stopped, only to be met with further venom from her: "What the hell do you think you're doing, you ASSHOLE!!"
Yes, I am an asshole.
I was obviously trying to kill her, and thank heaven that this wonderful lady had gotten the asshole to keep from purposely running her over.
In most moments like that, I would feel bad for having been a bit careless. But in this case, I didnt feel bad, because she verbally attacked me. There was no compassion in her at all.
I guess I took it for granted that she would have realized that I was in a hurry (after all, I was running past her to my car) and would have ceded to me in my trying to back out. But no. Being the righteous and wonderful person that she is, it seems that she must have purposely (or mindlessly) brought her dogs directly behind me at just the right moment.
I am an asshole indeed.
And Bill Maher is a staunch conservative. And lions are herbivores. And Elvis is a vampire.
But no matter what she does, she cannot hurt me. Because her words and her actions are not about me, they are about her.
And I therefore do not take them personally.
Don Miguel Ruiz has taught me this, and I will abide by it forever.
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9 comments:
some people live in misery and they endlessly try to find company. Glad you are not spending anytime in that department my friend.
so for anyone to leave a message they must have a blog? hmmmm, not everyone does.
JBT - no, misery is not a companion of mine. I choose happiness. I only wish that my downstairs neighbor would too.
And I have to confess, I don't understand what you mean by your 2nd comment. "for anyone to leave a message..." By 'leave a message' do you mean comment? And are you saying that people can't leave comments unless they have a blog? I don't think that's true. You can leave 'Anonymous' comments. I've done it many times...
JBT - I just looked at my blog Settings and discovered that mine was set so as to only allow comments from Google users. I've fixed that to make it so that anyone can leave a comment. Thanks for pointing this out. :)
I feel your pain!!! (I am catching up with all your posts as you can see!) My neighbors downstairs are SO loud, that I really think they have no clue they are... I thought they were mad at me at once instance, banging every single door, as if they were doing it on purpose, and stomping around on their hard wooden floors just to rile me up. But it was then when I walked outside, and the neighbors were out there too filling up their truck with vacation goodies. They greeted me and asked me how I was doing. They had no clue. But, if I was a complete "asshole", I would have said, "Do you realize how much effin noise you make!!!???" But I just chucked it up to - they're just a bit louder than the norm. So it's better to deal with.
Are there people living below them as well? Because if you were in bed, how can they hear a loud bang? They probably didn't know where it was coming from.
People are strange, and especially when you live so close together -it's like living WITH them.
Ah, apartment living is wonderful, isn't it? :)
Thanks, Deb. To answer your question, no, my downstairs neighbor is on the ground floor, so there are no apts below her. She's just psychotic, I guess.
Actually, the REALL problem is that this woman is living in an apartment, yet seems to expect the level of quiet that you would get living in a single-family house. And to that, I would tell her "Then you should effing move to a house!"
As you said, apartment living is wonderful. ;p
Wow. I'm so glad I found your blog! Your writing is deadpan and clever, and so fun to read!
(God, I feel like such a suck-up when I find a great new blog. But honestly... from one writer to another...)
A few months ago someone called me an asshole. Oh brother! And ironically, I was (like you) in my car at the time. Apart from being flustered by the traffic situation that caused me to offend the name caller, I was flabbergasted to have been summed up with such a harsh description of my character. Worse, my teenage son was in the car with me. It bothered me that the assholery I'd somehow managed to keep hidden from him all these years was revealed so strikingly by a total stranger. So I gave him the finger. :-/
ananji
Thanks Ananji, for reading and commenting, and especially for sharing your own story with all of us. :)
I have had several discussions with people about what an 'asshole' really is, and I've realized that when you get right down to it, we are all assholes, at least in the eyes of someone. Because what an asshole is is a person whose personal behavior conflicts strongly with the values of the observer. And therefore, I am no doubt an asshole to many people.
But I can live with that... ;)
I need to re-read The Four Agreements soon too, Toddy...
There are some analogies to my experiences working in an inner city ghetto-lite pharmacy (for which company I thankfully no longer work for, since they put me in these situations far too much). Sometimes, you got to wait and eventually change the situation (move out, find another company, etc). But until then, it is so hard to change your mindset, which you gotta do, because you cannot change other miserable people's mindsets. For me, it was customers at an inner city ghetto-lite pharmacy (not enough to get stabbed at, like my old apartment in Buffalo, but not enough to feel comfortable walking around at night in either). The customers used the public busing system, and didn't have much in their lives to be thankful for. Plus, they hated "the man" and "the system" which "dragged them down". They'd come in waves of five to ten every ten minutes, and want everything done for them in one minute, so they could catch the very next bus to get another 40 of malt liquor, another pack of cigarettes, or another vice to sink into. Got called everything in the book: honkie, cracker, stupid new intern, asshole, you name it. I TOOK IT PERSONALLY. IT RAISED MY BLOOD PRESSURE. I SHOULDN'T DO THIS. I MUST RE-READ THE FOUR AGREEMENTS. Maybe I should start a support group blog for people who want to change, like you and I do. It is so easy to give advice and so hard to act upon it. But the only thing to do when you cannot change miserable people is change the way you react yourself. Can you recommend some good self-help books? I recently saw Drew Carey on William Shatner's talk show and Carey said he is working on achieving another mantra, another viewpoint, another agreement to keep with oneself. The goal is not to even have any reaction to these miserable people at all, but to have a kind of blanket waiver that allows forgiveness for their trespasses of misery. In other words, when someone cuts you off when driving to work, the goal is not only to achieve keeping your cool, forgiving them later (hard enough to do since we often react with anger and later say oh well, I'll forgive and forget since maybe he was having a bad day too and decided to yell out the window and cut me off), but rather the goal is to AUTOMATICALLY FORGIVE BEFOREHAND, SO THERE ISN'T EVEN A REACTION (in this instance, keep driving cool without any reaction, without any distraction, without any change in temperament or keel, just plain driving the car). I SUPPOSE THIS IS EMOTIONAL NIRVANA. Know any self help-books that could point me in this direction Toddy?
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