Thorns
As it is written:
Wherever a piece of shit is, anywhere else you go will be a piece of shit also.
Since you’re the only person you can change, that’s who you should focus on. Right? Turn the other cheek. Pray for your enemies. Kill them with kindness which will heap burning coals upon their head.
After not driving my car all of halloweekend, I returned to it the following Monday morning to find that someone had keyed it deeply, from the front bumper of the drivers side all the way to the back bumper, assuring that a repair would require repainting of every single panel. Numbly, I drove to Walt Disney studios for yet another SAG picket, as planned. The death tolls in the middle east were rising, somehow our country was still letting it happen. The injustices of the day were overflowing.
The last time I had driven had been the Friday before. In broad daylight I had opened up both doors on the drivers side, placing a grocery bag in the backseat before getting in to drive. In order for the keying to take place outside my garage, I would’ve had to miss the blatant damage spanning the length of the car in that parking lot, then I would need to miss it again when retrieving the groceries at home, in back, far off the main road.
A police officer met me outside. Can you think of anyone who would do this to you? He asked. A couple days prior we had made another complaint to the landlord about our neighbor with whom we shared a wall in that duplex. Over that weekend he’d had what seemed like a 24 hour party lasting through morning.
Past offenses included a day and night mash-up of the following: stomping / slamming, loud music, yelling, breaking glassware on purpose, loudly scolding his boyfriend, screaming profanities at his dogs (FUCKING BITCH! FUCKING CUNT!) while they yelped and squealed — (what the hell was he doing to them?), and not last OR least — accusing me of making it all up.
Besides causing general foreboding on a day to day basis, he sparked in me such bitterness toward homeowners. How dare people who live in a standalone house not have to deal with this? Cue homeowners getting defensive in my DMs. Haha.
I told the police about this aggressive man and his passive aggressive boyfriend who both made our lives a hellish circus. The officer believed me but could do nothing if I was not vandalized again.
Sanity
It occurred to me that the verbal abuse I’m so accustomed to in my family was now much calmer by comparison: the digs, the name calling, the emotional manipulation exclusively through text now! that I’m finally equipped to handle. I could block people now. I could just not answer. Other annoying neighbors were merely fruit flies, like the one who hassled me about the ancient lantern hanging in front of my stoop until I just let her take it. She also insisted that I parlay to her my “heritage” at one point. WHAT’S YOUR HERITAGE? Pardon, I asked? I SAID, WHAT’S YOUR HERITAGE?? That I could handle.
But this was more physical, psychological. His voice would slice through my wall, directly into my senses, till it felt like he was inside my head.
Every time I heard his rage, I would freeze, panic, spiral. He acted so ordinary outside, planting beautiful tropical plants all over the front lawn. Then I’d be violently awoken to BAD GIRL, MOLLIE! BAD GIRL! FUCKING BITCH! at 2am, and it would end as quickly as it started, leaving me no time to record anything. Mollie was one of his dogs, the poor thing. She yelped at 10 second intervals every time he left. Peace never.
I began to really doubt the idea of horrible people everywhere you go. Maybe he was the exception, maybe he was worse than your average horrible person. Where was the pile of fiery coals for his head? Instead of watching my thoughts pass by like train cars, I began leaping onto never-ending escalators that took me to still more escalators.
His voice unlocked the helplessness of my childhood, having no control, scrambling for purchase underneath the waves of angry people.
He was the only individual I could imagine angry and duplicitous enough to vandalize my property, a reliable Honda Civic that took me almost ten years to pay for.
He once said he couldn’t meet outside to discuss his noise because the doctors found a tumor. When my partner offered sympathy about chemo, he replied no chemo yet, just super nauseous.
He would use anything to escape accountability, even possibly fabricated cancer.
After we sent an apartment-wide email about the vandal, he told a fellow neighbor that I probably cut someone off on the freeway and that they probably followed me home and keyed my car. Pathological liars do that — provide backup reasoning when they shouldn’t have reasoning at all.
It’s comical that his profession is makeup — flush with the theme of camouflaging something ugly with attractive colors, of treating the symptom but not the cause. The parallel was haunting.
I feared going out, nervous he’d be out front. Horrific visions plagued me: him breaking into my unit and stabbing me, him choking me as I gasped for breath, him poisoning my dog.
Over the course of years, my amygdala took a dive as it sprung upon me violent images of what the best punishment would be. Him getting absolutely ~squashed~ beneath an enormous trash truck. Him getting ripped apart by that hellbent T-Rex from Jurassic Park. Him getting slashed open by machetes. The thoughts even began to comfort me. This wasn’t me, and I couldn’t stop.
Am I insane?
Am I insane?
AM I INSANE, I asked my low cost therapist? No, she said.
But why can’t my rage be as loud as everyone else’s? I want to go so fucking crazy that I start breaking dishes and harm people. I want to let my rage take over like the people who have harmed me. I WANT TO BE THE FUCKING HULK!
You’ve exercised every option, the therapist said, your brain is resorting to anything it can think of.
OK, I said. But how do I stop it?
I’m a highly sensitive person, well versed in the little tricks we use. Don’t give that person power. Don’t engage. Don’t think of it, think of something else, rise above, ignore. But where could I retreat if my home was infested?
Values
The question of whether or not we could handle that neighbor’s adult tantrums and regular sound pollution somehow became a question of whether or not I even wanted to live. Being spurred daily with proof that people like that face no outward consequences when the world is bad enough, when innocent civilians keep dying for no reason everywhere.
It became not just about that neighbor, but always, always, always, the greater concept of what that neighbor represented: complete and utter injustice.
Some people make you forget why living matters. Sometimes there’s nothing left to do but abort the mission. So after seven years in that apartment, the exterior painted the cheerful shade of Pepto Bismol, we finally spent thousands of dollars we did not have to remove ourselves.
We’re moving, I told the Trader Joe’s guy to explain my basket of solely prepared foods. Oh, did you buy a house? He asked. No, I replied, with the hint of a laugh. Just moving apartments.
Oh, he said.
But it’d be better if more people accepted that progressing laterally is still progressing. Life isn’t always steady wins until you’re able to max out your IRA and own a dishwasher. It’s occasional hills, but mostly plains and divots.
Deciding to move was momentous, then everything else was heaped on top like a pile of unfolded laundry: my dog defecating bright red blood — spending all day at the animal hospital, my dad’s emotional provocation that arrives without fail each holiday season, asking the clerk at Caliber to split up my $1,000 deductible (to repair the vandalism) on multiple credit cards, not to mention the atrocities overseas condoned by our own government. It all made sense. The world was fucking silly.
Shedding
Maybe that sad, pathetic neighbor was simply an accessory of the inevitable apocalypse, an emblem of passivity, a reminder of how I want to be: at least semi emotionally regulated. Compassionate. Not the reason someone questions their sanity. The same person outside as I am within.
Taking down the pictures on the walls, the mirrors, the decor. Selling my belongings on facebook. Taking down the curtains had meaning. I was shedding that place. The old version of me who was trapped there was now coming away like old tree bark, scarcity winning me, the me that obsessed over the concept of home, seven-years-ago-me materializing everywhere, underneath every object. Hiii, they were saying, remember this? Remember who I was? Remember how we coped back then?
That apartment became stifling. Going back and forth, cleaning up, dealing with the dregs, so redundant.
Where did all that stuff come from? The segregated floor plan, the lurking smell, the walls that could not even keep rain out — it was all more obvious than ever.
Is it only at your lowest that the universe starts sending you signals of microscopic hope, teensy triumphs? Or is it that you’re raw, a cracked open coconut, no longer caring whether you’re scooped out, a vacant surface on which most anything can land?
We ran a 5k at South Pasadena high school. A teen boy sang the anthem a cappella. In high notes he reached his hand in a gesture toward the sky, then brought it quivering to his heart. It made me want to cry. Just seeing him up there singing in front of 800 people. A man beside me said to his kid, that boy is brave!
The race began. Across the plastic platforms we flew. Little kids ran past, strong, hands flopping. Thank you, I said to no one in particular.
My stomach threatened to let go. My legs screamed to stop. Not yet, I thought. Let’s get through this 5k even if it’s not our best.
While moving I found my old tap shoes. So I danced in that stupid pink apartment, the sounds echoing off the empty walls, zero insulation to muffle their cries. We’re free, my tapping feet seemed to say. Try and stop us.
how my pathetic neighbor evolved me into a stronger pokemon