I moved last week. I’ve enjoyed living in my previous home
for the majority of my past three years, but then things went sour when a
psycho moved into the other half of my duplex. By the end, she legitimately had
me fearing for my safety, so it was time to go.
I knew there was going to be a problem from the start. She
knocked on my door the first day to complain that her electricity had gone out
like I was her super or something. I introduced myself, but she refused to
shake my hand and glared at me rather than telling me her name back. But I was
still kind enough to try to play with her fuse box; I’m not an electrician so I
couldn’t figure it out, but she could have at least thanked me for my effort.
“Not friendly,” I thought, which was a shame, because I was good friends with
the old man who lived there for the previous several years.
She ended up being all sorts of loud. She had two kids, an
eight year old and a baby. She screamed at the 8-year-old incessantly.
Honestly, it was her primary way of communicating with him. Through the walls,
I could easily hear her letting out a string of expletives at him on a daily
basis. Granted, I couldn’t see what the kid was doing, but I rarely heard him,
so I had no idea what was pissing her off so much.
And the baby was crying all of the time. Now, I know it’s a
baby and that babies cry a lot, but its mama didn’t help the situation any by
ignoring it. For example, a baby cries when it needs a change or is hungry, but
my neighbor didn’t care because she was always otherwise occupied on the phone.
For real, the majority of her day was spent yacking (and
generally yelling) on the phone; her conversations were all audible to me, too.
They fit into two categories: her in a verbal fight with someone, or her
complaining endlessly about how someone had wronged her. I didn’t understand
how someone who never left her house could have that much drama going on, but
then I realized it must be because she actually loves the drama. She was so
bored with her life, she was inventing fights to get into.
And so it was only a matter of time before she started drama
with my roommate and me – pretty much the only adults she had human contact
with on a regular basis. Her first complaint was that we slammed the door all
the time. This wasn’t even true, mind you. We had an iron door that made noise
even when you shut it gently. I pointed out that she slammed the door on
purpose all the time, but she said she didn’t care. So why was she pointing
this out, then?
The problem, she said, was that her baby slept in a crib
next to the door. She had a lot of space in her home to put that crib, but she
put it right next to the communal doorway so it would be as far away from her
own bedroom as possible so she could sleep undisturbed. (Again, what a good
mother!) We were foiling her plan by making noise going in and out of our door
at ungodly hours (as late as 10 or 11pm!) and waking up her baby and thus her,
too.
More than me, she shouted at my roommate. She didn’t like
that my roommate invited friends to our home. All of her friends were nice,
respectful people, by the way, but my neighbor resents other people having fun
and said that she had to stop bringing other people around or she’d complain.
She then emphasized that we wouldn’t want for her to bring her “friends” around
and then insinuated
It’s no surprise that that roommate moved out quickly after
that, and I don’t blame her. So I got a new roommate. She was super nice, super
quiet, and super respectful, and that’s not even an exaggeration. But my
neighbor started screaming at her almost immediately. Her first gripe was that
my roommate was taking her parking space. Here are two very important facts
that you need to know about this dispute: 1) Our parking was on a public street
with no restrictions, so anyone can park wherever they want whenever they want
– there are no “spots”. 2) My roommate did not even own a car, so whoever was
parking in my neighbor’s non-existent space was not my roommate. But she got
called a bitch for it anyway!
Soon after, the neighbor lied to my landlord about how loud
we were, which was laughable since she was the one yelling (be it to her child,
whoever was on the phone, and us) all the time, and that we had a third person
living in our house, which was also false. We barely had two people living at
my house since my roommate stayed at her boyfriend’s place most of the time,
which made it even stranger that she unjustifiably hated my roommate so much. My
landlady threatened me with eviction without even speaking to me about any of
this first, and so I rattled off a lot of reasons why these complaints were
preposterous. My landlady’s suggestion was to avoid her entirely by only using
my side door. (So I was supposed to avoid my own front door to appease a crazy
neighbor? Great advice.) That may help her, but I still heard her screaming
every day.
Then one day she confronted me. She wanted to have a
“discussion” but that meant her yelling at me and cutting me off every time I
tried to say anything in response. She declared that I didn’t respect her
because she’s a woman, which was funny because I thought she was the one who
had a problem with women since she went after both of my female roommates more
than me. She also accused me of “taking advantage of her kindness,” at which
point I laughed aloud. For that to happen, she would have to show even a
smidgen of kindness at some point, right? It just didn’t make sense.
But my neighbor’s biggest complaint of all was that WE were
rude because we weren’t friendly with her. I couldn’t believe such a rude
person was upset with us. If your first interactions with us are mean and you
continually yell at us, how can you expect us to smile and wave when we see
you? As I tried to point this out, she admitted that she’s a “bitch”, but “that’s
just who I am, so oh well, get used to it.” (Similarly, as for yelling at her
kid, she said “that’s just how I parent, so oh well, that’s how he’s going to
be raised.) As far as I’m concerned, this woman is nuts, and I was afraid of
her, and she was clearly missing some screws if she was accusing us of being
unfriendly.
Things took a funnier turn the next week when I heard her
outside my door late at night swearing up a storm and threatening to have us
beat up. This made me afraid, but I decided to open my door and ask her if she
wanted to talk about it calmly. She then retreated to and slammed her own door.
She was upset about a noise she was hearing that she was sure we were making
just to piss her off. It was the sound of rushing water, to be specific. A
plumber was soon able to confirm that we were not the culprit of the noise;
instead the pipes under the house had burst and were leaking, thus the rushing
water noise.
All of this time, I remained calm around her. I didn’t call
her names (to her face anyway) even though she had no qualms about calling me a
“fucking asshole” or whatever, but I decided I would not stoop to her level.
All the same, she made me mad. Furious even. I didn’t want her to win, but she
was making me an angry person like her, and I didn’t like that. So when my
roommate, after just a few months, decided she wanted to move out in part
because she was tired of being threatened and screamed out (I wonder why?) I
realized it was time for me to go, too. Things were not going to get better
with a new roommate, and they were getting increasingly worse for me. I
realized none of this was normal and that I deserved to live somewhere without
being afraid of my next-door neighbor.
In my last week of living at my old home, there was a sudden
windstorm. She had left a giant umbrella attached to a table, and when the wind
whipped at the umbrella, it caused the whole table to topple over and break.
Unfortunately, it occurred during one of the rare moments my neighbor wasn’t
home, and when she came home she immediately screamed about how she knew I did
it and was banging on my door repeatedly and saying that I better “watch out”
because she was “going to get” me. I had already put in notice, but I wanted to
get out of there ASAP. This woman was nuts and escalating the threats to
something more specific. “Better watch your stuff, it’d be a shame if it broke,
too.” I began parking my car a few blocks away because I thought she might
slash the tires.
Honestly, I didn’t touch her table. I don’t feel about it
happening as it couldn’t have happened to a “nicer” person, but I honestly wish
it hadn’t happened because it would have made me moving out way nicer. The only
reason she thinks I was responsible was because a) she’s nuts and b)
unprovoked, she called my roommate “a fucking bitch” the night before when she
was just entering the house, and she probably figured we retaliated. Even her
8-year-old said, “It was the wind, Kevin didn’t do that!” which didn’t make her
happy, obviously. The wind was the act of karma, I tell ya.
Moving out was a nightmare in itself. If you’ve ever moved
large appliances and furniture through a tiny doorway, you know it’s not a
quiet process. It was certainly loud when she moved in! Even thought it was my
last day and I was clearly on my way out, my neighbor still managed to flip a
total shit about the “noise” and “disrespect.” It was a nonsensical rant that
included her calling me white trash and saying that she was “sick of my fucking
ass.” The feeling was mutual, but I didn’t say it. The only time I tried to
respond, she just mocked me in a funny voice by repeating exactly what I said,
which is totally normal behavior for a 43-year-old woman. “You’re fucking lucky
this is your last day!” she screamed before deciding, “You know what? It’s too late,
I’m having you beat up, you deserve it!” Then she either called someone to come
over and kick my ass. I wouldn’t put it pass her crazy mind to actually arrange
for that, truthfully. I was gone with the moving truck before anyone showed up,
thankfully.
I’m just so happy to be free of this nightmare. True – she
wins, she got me to move out which was her aim from the start, but I might win
even more because I don’t have to ever see her again. The landlady thinks she’s
fixed the problem now that I’ve moved out, she’s mistaken. Because the odds are
nearly 100% that she’s going to go psycho crazy on the next people, too, so
good luck with that.
And yeah, I suppose I hate my former neighbor, but more than
that, I just pity her. It must suck to be so unhappy with your life that you
can think of nothing better to do with your time than to try to make everyone
else miserable, too. And I feel really bad for her kid who seems pretty nice
and has to face her verbal abuse every single day. I can’t even imagine being
raised by a monster of a single parent.
If you stuck with me through all of this, thanks. I needed
to – now that I feel safe – get out my story. She has been my life’s major
source of agitation the past several months. I was filled with rage and hate because
of her, but that’s gone. By sharing this story, I’m putting it behind me. Now I
have it on record, and now I can move on. Here’s to no more psychos
irrationally threatening me!
