Withdrawal

I’m going through withdrawal. Not only from prescription drugs, but also, it seems, from society. As the anti-seizure drug prescribed to me for nerve pain slowly leaves my organs, I’m feeling dizzy, nauseated, confused, a teeeensy bit suicidal, and to top it off, I can’t sleep. Insomnia is also a withdrawal symptom. For 20 hours a day, as I rotate between my couch and my bed, I began to notice THINGS. I'm noticing and learning things about my neighbors: their routines, habits and SECRETS. I felt like Jimmy Stewart in the Hitchcock classic Rear Window*.

Since becoming a shut-in and stalking observing my neighbors, I’m finding myself now avoiding eye-contact in the hallways and ignoring knocks on the door. This, it seems, is the other side of withdrawal that they don’t put on prescription labels. It’s probably just the crippling paranoia but I imagine that, while I’m listening to them, they’re probably all thinking that I talk to an imaginary friend all day (my cat, Chris) and probably assume I have Tourettes (I’ve been watching a lot of Weeds on DVD).

"Tell me more about your childhood, Longtime."

Anyway, as per usual on this blerg, my temporary loss of sanity is your gain! My neighborly observations are as follows:

1. What I first believed to be rigorous sex from my upstairs neighbor turned out to be a rowing machine. How bored am I?

2. Said rowing enthusiast also snores loud enough to be heard in any room of my apartment. I’m thinking about slipping some nose strips under his door, although that would require me to go outside. Never mind.

Not sexy

3. The man whose porch faces mine stands outside and clears his through for a full 5 minutes every morning. It's seriously gross but I look forward to it, nonetheless.

4. My neighbor Brian who always tells me our cats should have play dates has been having cat play dates with my other neighbor and her cat Portia without me in the hallway. I can hear you guys! You know…cats can sense fear.

5. This same guy also has a land line. Who has a land line anymore? Probably middle-aged men who schedule cat play dates.

Likeness of Brian on his land line

6. My next-door neighbor’s alarm goes off at 5:15 am and she leaves the house at 6 on-the-dot every morning. So early. I always feel bad for her. I mean I’m still/ already awake at that time, which stinks but she’s the one who has to get out of bed. Bummer! I’ll never be able to tell her how I feel…that would be creepy.


7. I learned that Chris, the transvestite who decorates my door for every holiday, has a large, black, married (to a woman) COP boyfriend. He gave her an enormous diamond bracelet for their 10th anniversary last week. What I wouldn’t give to be a fly on that wall. A fly with a mini camera strapped to its head.

"I pity da fool who tells my wife!"

8. Chris’s other boyfriend helps her shovel the walk. That’s just nice, what else can I say?

9. The girl living below me had a short-lived fascination with bongo drums. She seems to have gotten over it, thank goodness. She might be a stoner, but she is no Matthew McConaughey.

10. This same girl comes home late most nights and microwaves stuff. Hot pockets maybe? Bed buddies? Not sure, but it never fails.

11. When she comes home at 2 & 3 am, she also likes to blast her music and I assume she has the speakers up against the ceiling. Like an old lady, I had to resort to banging on the

floor with a broomstick to get her to turn off that racket. Not unlike Schoprah’s Napster play list from freshman year, November Rain is always the first song to play.

12. Finally, my landlord Brendan is a lovely man with a charming brogue but I’ve convinced myself that he’s in the Irish mafia. Last week, I casually asked a neighbor if they could hear the music in the middle of the night (see above), and Brendan showed up at my door a half-hour later offering to “put a stop to it for good”. I once told him my faucet was dripping and he vowed to “put a stop to it for good”. There was a leak by my window and he swore to me that he'd "put a stop to it...for good". He smells like Jameson and has a distant look in his eye and I hear him humming Danny Boy in his office. All delusions point to a life of organized crime. I also just love how he calls me Kit-tee.


I have a new appreciation for hermits and elderly shut-ins. I can see how being alone in a small space for an extended period of time might make a person lose it a little. I mean, maybe my neighbor across the courtyard didn’t strangle his girlfriend and carry her body out in a rolled up carpet the other day. Or maybe he DID.

*alternately the 2007 Shia LaBeouf classic, Disturbia.