A month or so ago, I attended the Spring Fling, basically a marketing opportunity for various performing arts organizations in the city.  I gave my contact info for a chance to win tickets at a number of venues.  While it doesn’t appear that I’ve won anything, I did receive a nasty reminder of something I’d rather forget.

There are a few periods in my life that I consider the worst.  The first is the period of my mother’s illness.  The second is the hell of living with my father’s fourth wife in the aftermath of my mother’s death.  The third is my last two or so years in New York, when I suffered serious depression and anxiety.  The fourth took place just this past winter.  I was subjected to the ugliest, most hostile living conditions since I left New York City.  The worst New York had to offer couldn’t compare.

When things get really, horribly bad, I strangely clam up.  When I was subjected to a mildly annoying and very passive-aggressive neighbor, I had no problem bitching about it to my friends and on my blog.  But my neighbor situation last winter was practically unspeakable.

The noise.  It was constant.  Loud music practice, blasting electronica, blaring TV, hysterical laughing, loud talking on the verge of shouting, sometimes actual shouting.  Whenever I heard a commotion on the street, I needed only to count to ten before I heard the downstairs apartment’s door open and close.  And then there was the bathroom fan.  A hum at about sixty-five decibels.  Vibrations reverberating throughout my apartment.  It would turn on at 1 p.m. (downstairs slacker’s wake-up time) and turn off late at night.  Sometimes it would start up at 3 a.m. and stay on for an hour.  This noise was rarely accompanied by the sound of water running.

I’m naturally a homebody, but I particularly need to nest in the fall and winter, especially in gray, rainy Seattle, but I had reached the point where I dreaded going home at night.

My patience having been put to the limit, I started to complain.  My complaints were honored (at least on that particular day or night), but the male unit of the couple made sure to shout “What a bitch!” and other epithets at the ceiling once I returned to my apartment.  I’d come home to find the music downstairs to be somewhat tolerable, but the neighbors made sure to jack it up to intolerable levels once I’d walked through the door.

And then the gaslighting.  The neighbors treated me like a bitch, like a lunatic.  Everything they were guilty of they lobbed at me.  I was vindictive.  I was childish.  I was a liar.  I was a nuisance.  Any noise I made for whatever reason or at whatever time of day was intolerable to them.  I started to feel like I was going crazy.  I started to believe that I was a shitty person undeserving of peace or respect.  And the noise never, ever stopped or decreased.

Things came to a head, and they were forced to shut everything down (ironic, since I merely wanted some peace and quiet).  Ultimately, though, I couldn’t bear the venom seeping up through my apartment floor.  Cheap rent and the permission to paint and otherwise modify my space weren’t worth that shit.  So, as soon as I was able, I moved out.

The reminder:  One of the major theater companies (Intiman, Seattle Rep, whatever) sent an email with a photo of the female part of the equation at one of their events.  I’ve thankfully let go of much of the awful feelings of that time; it helps that my new apartment is amazing, replete with friendly and respectful neighbors, and that my life is better than ever.  But I still retain some of the bafflement of that experience.  What kind of issues does a person need to have to treat others that way?  Certainly the husband was a bundle of barely contained rage (I’m almost certain he reacted to the apartment manager’s cracking down on him by throwing furniture around), but what accounts for his wife’s behavior?  Most of the projection from that quarter came from her.

Perhaps unsurprisingly they did not learn from the experience.  I heard from another neighbor that they moved out under duress a couple of months later.  I guess whoever moved into my old place didn’t appreciate their antics any more than I did.  Who’s to say if they will ever learn/ever grow up.  What I do know is:  living well is the best revenge.

The recent controversy over how to deal with aggressive panhandling, or whether to deal with it at all, has conjured up a lot of emotions about the whole thing.

There was a time when I was so generous toward panhandlers.  As a kid, I’d ask my mom for change to give to some guy on the street.  That the aggressive homeless would say shitty things to my mother flummoxed me more than anything else.  Once, when I was 13, I gave a little of my meager allowance to a panhandler outside Woolworth’s just to hear all the other panhandlers within earshot loudly and bitterly complain that I didn’t give them anything.  There were the men who sexually harassed me before asking for change, the panhandlers who would loudly curse other pedestrians and would turn around and immediately beg from me, and, best of all, the panhandlers who would get incensed that I didn’t give them *enough*.

All of this didn’t turn me away from trying to be helpful.  Throughout college, I’d put a few dollars in my pocket so as to more easily give a panhandler some cash when asked.  But in recent years my attitude has changed.

I’ve always felt uneasy about giving money directly to the homeless.  Mostly it’s because I can’t help them all.  I’ve always had to make a Sophie’s Choice about which person to help and which to spurn.  This has been a source of anxiety and guilt for as long as I can remember.

Secondary to that is the feeling that I’m not really helping.  Maybe it’s petty, but I generally need to sense some sort of benefit from giving another person a hand.  It’s not that I need homeless people to grovel at my feet; I prefer being able to help out without the other person needing to feel they have to make a big show of gratitude.  Nevertheless, I need to feel that my money is going toward something important/useful, and I just don’t get that feeling when giving money to the homeless.  It’s not just because I suspect that some/most of them spend the money on drugs or alcohol; it’s really about the fact that extreme poverty is a daily crisis.  When every single day a person desperately needs money for basic necessities, one measly dollar isn’t going to do a hell of a lot.  Nothing short of long-term effort and reform is going to solve the problem.

Tertiary to that is the crap I’ve taken from panhandlers over the years, and I don’t see any sign of it improving.  I don’t need to be made to feel guilty for not giving anything or to have it explicitly spelled out that I’m a bad person.  Thanks to my overall generous nature, I already feel that way.

I can’t say that panhandlers being sweet and gracious would change my mind at this point.  Panhandling is an aggravating part of city living for me (which I guess underscores how easy my life is), but knowing what my answer is and, most importantly, being consistent have made my everyday life just a little bit easier.

I’ve been reading some self-help books lately.  *blush*  A number of them are about how to live like a French woman.  *double blush*  And so many of them, surprise, surprise, are full of shit.

The funniest one was All You Need to be Impossibly French.  The title and back copy are highly misleading.  It’s really an opportunity for a British author to trash French women and make them out to be impossibly shallow.  It was really stunning, the disconnect between the marketing and the content of the book.

This book was slightly better, but this segment frustrates me:

Think of what you have that builds your sense of pleasure, calm, and self-esteem.  Join a club, secretly.  Or begin a new hobby that no one knows about but you.  Read a book, alone, and keep it private.  Find a new cafe that is your secret place.  Go to a matinee, but tell no one.

This is how I live my life.  Very secretly, discreetly, and all that.  French women do this and don’t sleep alone?  So what exactly am I doing wrong?

Any more of this and I’m going to go back to my original belief:  self-help is completely worthless.

Much worse.

On Sunday, after I’d spent much of my weekend feeling sorry for myself, I started reading this book.  Really no better way to make myself feel like an asshole for thinking MY life sucks.  Although it’s not doing much to make me feel better about humanity as a whole.

I’ve been trying to get out more, occasionally with other people but frequently alone.  It’s very easy to be a hermit in Seattle, if only because so many other people are too.

It’s becoming increasingly clear to me that, not only am I alone in being willing to be seen in public by myself, Seattlites are incredibly hostile to people out on their own.

Just last week, I went to see Billy Connolly, and, when my seat neighbor realized I was on my own, she sneered at me.

A month or so ago, at my opera club, I was talking to a couple I’d just met.  The woman asked if I’d come alone, I said yes, and she squealed “Oh!  Good for you!”

Then there was the bartender back in January who felt I had to defend my decision to go out drinking by myself.  Wait, why did I give him a tip?

In New York, it’s very common for people to go out alone.  I’m sure part of it is due to their cramped, uncomfortable living conditions.  Few people have the luxury of hiding at home, not if they live in a squalid basement studio in Washington Heights.  But some of it also has to be that New Yorkers actually talk to each other.  You won’t be treated like you’re invisible in New York the way you are here.

I suspect that much of what goes down in Seattle is a nasty feedback loop.  Seattlites don’t talk to each other and don’t make friends.  Consequently, many people are left largely friendless.  If they try to go out alone, they’re ignored or given shit for it, so they give up and stay at home.  And, since there are few people out alone, judgmental assholes aren’t forced to get over it.

I might just be paranoid, but it seems like some of the hostility (versus simply indifference) is due to the fact that I’m breaking the rules.  It seems like people here really feel the need to have someone, a friend, an acquaintance, a partner, to go out with, and something about a person forgoing that threatens them.