Neighbor Probs

As I post to this blog throughout the semester, some of the things I talk about will be more easy to relate to than others. This post is hopefully something that not a lot of people can relate to. If you’ve experienced something similar, I’m really sorry and I hope you handled it well.

Prerequisite knowledge required: Amanda and I live in a two-story townhouse with neighbors on either side separated from us only by very thin walls. And when I say “very thin,” I mean very…very thin. Now, with the neighbors in Apt 1, we have established the mature protocol that if one of us is being too loud, the other will politely tap on the wall. The first will understand that they are being obnoxious and turn down the volume. This has worked well in the past and has kept us from trying to kill each other. We behave like adults. With the people in Apt 3, there is no such understanding. Also, maturity, in general, is a little lacking.

So, anyway, my neighbor from 3 was yet again verbally abusing his girlfriend rather loudly one Monday evening. I didn’t think much of it at first because this was a pretty common occurrence. Little did I know, it was not going to be a typical night.

I hadn’t gotten home from work until eleven o’clock and I was tired. I let it go on for a while because I was doing homework anyway. But after about an hour and a half of relentless screaming, I had had just about enough. I had to wake up at 7:30, and I needed my beauty sleep. So when I lightly tapped on the wall to indicate that he should maybe quiet down since it was 12:30 in the morning, he trained his anger on me instead. He started yelling at me through the walls calling me a lot of names that will not be repeated here. He dared me to call the cops, threatening to get me kicked out of the apartment. He said that he had been here for nine years over my one and he had video evidence that would get me booted out. Then he called me a slut and suggested I go “f*** another black guy.”

At this point, I thought maybe he thought the knock had come from the apartment on the other side because I have never done that before. Not that I’m racist, I just haven’t gotten there yet. Also, neither Amanda nor I had ever had a boy stay the night in our apartment and we hadn’t broken any rules either. There was no way he could have video evidence of it if we had. (Unless he had installed cameras in our apartment, which is just beyond creepy.) Also, we’ve only lived there for maybe six months, tops, not a full year. However, my speculation was soon dissolved as he followed up by saying that I was a “nasty-a** brunette [w]itch with the blue car.” Yep, definitely me…I’m brunette, and I drive the only blue car out in that parking lot. I wouldn’t necessarily refer to myself as nasty or a [w]itch, but I was pretty sure that he now definitely knew who he was yelling at.

Another thing you may need to know is that I grew up in a really small town with my mom and on a hobby farm with my dad. I had never shared a wall with a neighbor, much less an angry one like this guy. I had no idea how to react. The most I could do was stay lying in my bed, shaking, cuddling with my cat.

After a while he got bored with me and shifted back to screaming at his girlfriend…and her seven year old daughter. Some time later, someone made a comment that made him reply with “yeah, and that [w]itch!!!” …and he was back on me. He said again how nasty I was and that he wouldn’t have sex with me if I was the last person on earth (yes, because I SOOO want to have anything to do with such a despicable human being) and some other stuff about my car and I don’t know what else. He went back to yelling at his girlfriend until 3 am when it sounded like it got physical because there was a lot of crashing and screaming followed by her yelling “look at my eye, I can’t even f***ing see” and him saying something about her throwing something at him and now he can’t even bend his finger. At one point he started yelling at the seven year old girl and calling her a word that can also be used to refer to a cat…or a willow.

This girl is seven…she’s not fricking Hercules, dude, calm down. I seriously considered calling the cops, or at the very least, waking up my city-grown roommate sure that she would know what to do. However, I was still glued to my bed and way too scared to move. I know now that calling the cops would’ve been the best option, but, hey, hindsight is 20-20.

This went on until about 5:30 am when I was finally able to sleep only to wake up for class at 7:30. Later that day, Amanda and I went to Doug, our apartment manager, and filed a report with him and then called the police and got a statement on file with them for reference in any future issues.

There you have it, the first night of my last semester. A nice way to start out, I dare say. Thankfully, it has been rather quiet over there since…actually a little too quiet. I hope they’re okay…well, I hope she’s okay…

 

Hello everyone!

Hi!

I created this blog for my Intro to PR Writing class, and I have decided to write about this, my final semester at Southwest Minnesota State University. For my first post, though, I thought I’d tell you guys a little bit about myself. I have one older brother, Cole, who is my best friend and I also get along very well with both of my parents. They have been divorced since I was two and I split my time at home between my mom’s place and my brother’s place, where my dad also lives. I have one cat at each house, but my mom’s cat, Ginger, is currently living with my roommate, Amanda, and I. She’s a “bombshell” (her words, not mine) (Amanda, not the cat.) We spend most of our time watching Netflix, eating food, baking brownies, and going on midnight McDonald’s runs. I also enjoy obsessively staring at my cat and reading science-fiction novels.

I’m 20 years old and I am a Junior. The road to being able to graduate a year early has been…interesting. I was able to take a lot of college classes in high school and brought in about 30 credits or so as a freshman. I have been in the honors program throughout my college career letting me pick my liberal education core instead of taking the regular generals that everyone else has to. I’ve also never taken less than 18 credits every semester and this last semester I am taking 22 credits. Hence the title of my blog.

Dark at the End of the Struggle, a hopefully obvious play on the phrase “light at the end of the tunnel” denotes the crazy issues that students, and me specifically, have to deal with in their last semester of college…the end of a long struggle through education. Please don’t think that I am completely pessimistic about this! I have had some really great times and made some fabulous memories here. I wouldn’t want to turn anyone off from this blog by making them think that it’ll just be me complaining about my oh so very sad life as a white girl with the opportunity to better herself through higher education. I plan to use this blog as a therapeutic log where I will recount my experiences in a (hopefully) witty and hilarious fashion. We’ll see if I’m successful.

Happy blogging!