I\’m in the middle of a really bad fms/cfids flare-up. Started a few hours ago out of seemingly nowhere, with no warning at all. But it\’s from the stress, completely.
As mentioned previously, my downstairs neighbor has been harassing me. This week it became much worse. She keeps calling the building management to complain about me, yet she still hasn\’t talked to me directly. I\’ve been getting calls from my landlord about \”the situation.\” To be fair to my landlord, she has been nice about it. But twice this week, when the people in the condo above my apartment made noise (10:10pm Thursday night, by coming home and walking across the floor; 9:35pm Friday night, they had a small party (12 people or so), which they had told the rest of the building about in advance), the woman in the condo beneath me responded to the noise being made above me by banging on her ceiling — my floor. During the party, I came down to my apartment, walked across my foyer to my linen closet to get something out, and that was when she banged on the ceiling/floor, directly under my feet. There was a freaking party one floor up and she was banging at ME for walking across my floor at 9:35. This is just a bit unreasonable, in my mind.
I feel like I\’m under attack. After she banged on Friday night, I packed a bag and left the building for the weekend. Just came home for five minutes every afternoon to feed the cat. I feel like I can\’t make a move without her displeasure.
I\’ve had two different nightmares about this/her in the past week. My stomach has been in knots fairly constantly, a rosacea cyst has developed on my chin, and I woke up Saturday to discover I had sprouted one oral and one genital wart since the night before. I only flare up with external HPV two or three times a year, but that\’s almost always genital. This is only my third oral wart since they started six years ago; they only come \’round when under loads more stress than usual. And now, the fms/cfids flare up today, too.
Tomorrow is the monthly homeowners\’ association meeting. Obviously, not being a condo owner, I\’m not a part of that. It has left me perturbed in the past that I have no say in the building, am not informed of building news, etc., but I\’ve let it slide. However, tomorrow\’s big topic is \”the noise issue,\” which is essentially the owner of condo #1 complaining that the renter in #101 makes too much noise. She\’s told this personally to the owner of #2, and last week she yelled at the owner of #102 about the noise I was making by vacuuming at 5:30pm. So, at the meeting, she\’s going to be complaining about me, and I won\’t be there to be able to say anything about it. Hell, I don\’t even know what it is (other than the vacuuming) that she thinks is so loud, because she\’s never talked to me directly!
One of the other owners invited me to the meeting so that we could all get to the bottom of the problem and attempt to find a solution. I\’ve spoken with all the other owners in the other four units, and none of them think I am loud or a nuisance. They all agree that noise travels a great deal in this building, however, my observations about what I can hear from the others far surpasses what they say they can hear from the other apartments. Whether or not this is because they just aren\’t home as much, naturally tune it all out, or what, I don\’t know. But while I hear a lot from the other apartments, it doesn\’t bother me, and I ignore it. The woman below me, on the other hand, appears to hear as much as I do, and is not ignoring it.
It would have been great to be able to have me drop by the meeting, discuss the noise first, then I would have left and they could get on with their exclusive property owners business. I just want this cleared up, and to have us all there, with their building manager/my landlord as mediator between me and the lady in #1 — that would have been great. Democratic, even. But having asked my landlord about it, it appears that being a renter in a condo building does not entitle me to democracy or democratic practice. My landlord said I can\’t come to the meeting because I\’m not an owner, and the meetings are for owners only. Supposedly, this is the rule of the homeowners association for the building. But who made that rule? When I told some of the owners that the landlord said I couldn\’t come because it was against the rules, they seemed genuinely surprised. As if they didn\’t know the rules themselves. If that\’s the case — not that they would, but they could — vote to change that rule. An owner invited me because they\’re going to be discussing ME. The lady in #1 is accusing me of causing problems (when this started a month ago, she specifically threatened that \”there would be trouble\”) and I can\’t even be there to find out the specifics or defend myself?
I feel completely violated. I\’ve been doing non-stop research but I can\’t find anything that pertains to a situation like this, where there\’s one renter and everyone else is an owner [and one owner is accusing the renter of being disruptive]. Because I don\’t have a copy of the bylaws (and I asked the other owners for theirs, but no one had an available copy), I don\’t even know if there is a rule I\’m violating, or if there is a rule that says I can\’t go. This is ludicrous. I feel like I\’m being completely denied due process and am being tried in absentia.
I\’m so upset by all this, that I don\’t even want to be at home for fear of pissing the lady off even more. I hate this.
