I didn't grow up in a physically violent home but there was an awful lot of yelling much of the time. But what else can you expect from a family of 4 girls with an off the boat father and mother who is more stubborn than a Christmas pageant mule?! I essentially moved out at 18 when I went to school though I was back the first 3 summers and for random, short periods of time over the years. When dad got real sick, I took over a good amount of the yelling at my mother... or one of my sisters did, there was never a lack of screaming matches. We were good at yelling at each other and good at being miserable much of the time. Our parents taught us that well.
Then I moved as far away as I could. Came back. Left again. Came back but to my own place in Philly. Things were good. The yelling at home was over... mostly. I moved and moved again. The fighting then returned to my home with some busted up drywall every now and again. I moved again. Things were good. I moved again. Things started out great and quickly deteriorated. I found myself in the all too familiar position of not wanting to go home. I moved far away.... again. Things were good. I ran out of money and came back to homelessness since the one place that offered me a permanent roof also offered me malicious back-stabbing pettiness. I don't need friends like that and didn't want to live like that. After bouncing around for a few years on couches, in my car, a few days a week here and there, I was exhausted and resigned myself to a "permanent" home. As permanent as I could allow something to be. And the fighting was back.... because that's what we grew up with. That's what we learned. We learned passive-aggressive manipulation and guilt. Once you've moved away from your family, you should never move back. Old habits die hard and yelling, whether I'm involved or not, gets in my head and I can't think or hear or talk or see or even breath after a while. I abhor raised voices.
Misery loves company. I slowly got sucked into the pettiness and skewed personal perceptions of what was happening. Entitlement flew like beads on Mardi Gras. Nothing out of malice but everything out of not knowing how to make things better. All my money was spent in travel to work over 35 miles away and my calm was buried in the back yard under the old outhouse.
I finally was able to move again.
It was a beautiful thing. A teeny studio apartment in the Port Richmond section of the city. Surrounded by mostly Polish families that had been there for generations. I figured it would be a lot like Fishtown and I LOVED my little apartment. Top floor, back of the building with lots of windows and a great view as the tallest building on the block. And alone. All alone! For the first time in my life I was alone and not lonely while surrounded by people. I found peace that I had only wished existed before. Happy, peace, contentment.
So, yeah, my neighbors smoke a lot of pot. A LOT of pot. eh, so the smell would wake me by creeping under my door at 7 am. I was still ok with that. Oh yeah, the dude that lived in the basement was dealing drugs enough to have the FBI snooping around and stopping me on the way to my car in the morning to ask questions. I kept to myself and had nothing to do with those people... it was ok. *sigh* and the boys downstairs would have crazy parties every other Friday night that were often loud enough to have neighbors down the street call the cops. Noisy, underage drunks.... eh, once every other week. I'd deal with that for a great little place on my own where I could wake up anytime I want each day and sit in my kitchen window with my morning coffee watching the morning rush on 95 in the distance as the sun came up over the Delaware.
Then the husband on the first floor, not the dealer, ended up in Graterford for walking into a bar with a hammer and bashing some dude's skull in. That unit moved out shortly thereafter and in came relatives of the boys on the second floor. They actually kept the noise of the parties down and stopped the fights when they started but suddenly the shouting through the hallways of the building increased all day, every day. Aaah, the yelling returns.
And then my next door neighbor moved out. YAY! No more pot smoke seeping under my door at all hours of the day! Oh but wait, more relatives moved in. This has now become a single family home of sorts with cousins, aunts, and uncles, girlfriends, children..... 19 members of a family and me, "the lady on the 3rd floor who keeps to herself and doesn't even have a tv."
The yelling increased. My new next door neighbors spend most of their time in the hall outside my door. I told them from the beginning that I hear everything that happens in the hall. They understand but the 2 yr old has a heart condition so they can't smoke in the apartment (plus it's a family of 4 in an efficiency and there's just not enough room). No one in this family knows how to speak. They yell. They yell and belittle each other constantly. All day and all night. A fight broke out one evening and the window on the one door in the foyer was busted out (or, as I found out 2 days later, an uncle pushed the 14 yr old through it for "gettin' in his face"). *sigh* a few weeks later of steady yelling and hearing things smash and break downstairs and then last Friday night happened.
I've learned over the past 2 winters that as long as I keep moving, I won't be so cold. Thus, the birth of the 24 hour dance party in my apartment. Sometimes with a glass of wine or a glass of whiskey to any music I may be in the mood for at the time. If I dance around until it's time to climb under my electric blanket I'm not paralyzed with cold. It's almost as good as having sufficient heat, iron, and blood pressure. I dance to the Smiths or Billie Holiday or Tori or Radiohead or Pink Floyd or Tool. It doesn't matter because there is no one else here. And I can do the dishes tomorrow everyday. I eat my own leftovers (though I'm nearly certain lentils and brown rice would be pretty safe from most any other person on the planet). I have bars and restaurants and Wawa in walking distance and the el is a quick trolley ride away. I love my home.
All the fighting is stressing me out. I regularly listen at my door for the rare few minute window that the neighbors are yelling at each other inside their apartment instead of at my front door. I don't like walking through a domestic dispute on my way out of my own home. It only makes things worse that the unsupervised boys downstairs have infested the building with roaches and I've now seen 3 in my apartment. Oh yeah, and of course there's the car repair bill every 4ish months from a mirror or window or the like being smashed out while parked. I am thankful that mine wasn't one of the six vehicles that had been set on fire and burned down to the frame this past summer.
Friday night was a going away party for the boys as the 19 yr old has joined the army and was leaving on Saturday. The DJ equipment went on at 10 am (typical). By 6 pm there were 60+ drunk teens downstairs (typical). By 8 pm the fights started (typical). By 1 am the cops had been here 3 times, the 17 yr old boy downstairs had been taken to the hospital, the railing between the first and second floor had been ripped out, the ceiling was busted where some kid got flipped and his foot went through, the wall in the stairwell between the first and second floor doesn't exist so much as it has more than a dozen holes from heads and bodies and fists. The glass on the second foyer door has been busted out. Both second floor windows to the outside are busted out from bricks getting thrown through them and no doors in that unit are in one piece or even hanging anymore. The wall on the second floor landing has a giant hole in it from a person getting thrown into it (likely the same one that got flipped down the stairs and smashed his foot through the ceiling).
I listened to this all from the safety of my apartment, shaking a little at the insanity that was happening around me. Saturday morning I left for work around 9:30 am trying to ignore the smell of stale beer and smashed beer bottles in the hallways and certainly pretending to not see the blood splattered through the halls. I politely stepped over the broken glass that was everywhere and quietly closed the doors to the building. Though, for the second time in my life I truly questioned how the hell I had gotten here.
My arrival back home after work found no more glass or blood and everyone in the building laughing about what had happened the night before. Laughing! Perhaps I'm a spoiled little girl from the suburbs but I'm pretty sure that this is not right or good or funny. Maybe my middle class upbringing is just causing culture shock right now. Whether it's my skewed perspective or their's, I'm not living like this. I've put the fighting behind me once, twice, .... eh many times. and I'm certainly doing it again. My new place is secured and undergoing some renovation before I can move in.
In the meantime, the boys downstairs are moving out! YAY! Being evicted actually. When they are gone the building will be bombed for bugs and the family of 4 next door will move into the 2 bed unit downstairs. But the yelling won't go away. I'm certain of that. I don't like the yelling in the least.
I've been sharply aware lately that I most definitely intensely fear anger. I will walk away instead of fight. I will hide instead of fight. I will stand up for myself when absolutely necessary though. I think that's the important part but I am too agreeable much of the time. I'm learning.... slowly, but I'm learning. With a better understanding of myself and why I behave the way I do, I'm ready to move forward. I am ready for things I've been avoiding for 8 years. There are possibilities in the air. They crept in with the autumn air and whether or not they are real is of no worry. Just breath. Things are constantly changing and getting better and everything is as it should be, just not in the right place quite yet.
