I’m blessed to be able to say that I haven’t experienced a ton of anger this week. The singular example of anger in my week is my upstairs neighbor.
I can’t be mad about someone living their life, so it’s not the heavy footed stomping around that bothers me. I can live with that. What I’m struggling to live with is the constant sound of things dropping, shuffling, or moving around on the ceiling. It starts around 5 am and continues throughout the day.
He also has some sort of water pump that rumbles and shakes the walls a little. I have no idea what he is doing up there but I am suspicious. Saturday morning, after an hour of machine rumbling, water started leaking through the ceiling into my bath tub. The ceiling was so saturated my finger poked through the plaster at the slightest touch. Now it’s raining in my apartment. Thank goodness it was over the bath tub. Eventually the leak stopped and has since been repaired. He claimed the leak was due to an improperly placed shower curtain but I have my doubts.
Because I’m below him, I hear his every move but he doesn’t hear anything I do. Sometimes I’m tempted to bang on the wall or poke the ceiling with a broom, but I know that will accomplish literally nothing. At the end of the day (and the beginning and middle), I have to practice the art of not caring. It’s not the noise that’s bothering me but my reaction to it. I can’t let my noisy neighbor live rent free in my head even when his footsteps live rent free in my ears.