Now, let me explain. She appears to be a pacer. I can hear her at all hours, pacing along the wall that our rooms share. She thunders five steps towards the door, then four steps back. Five steps to the wall, four steps back. Thunkthunkthunkthunkthunk pause thunkthunkthunkthunk. Over and over and over, interrupted occasionally by a drawer opening and closing or her throwing things on the floor. (I don't know why it takes her more steps to walk in one direction than the other. I really don't.) This wouldn't be so bad if not for the aforementioned improbable density. She walks so hard that it rattles my chair. Literally. You know that scene in Jurassic Park, when you can tell the giant T-Rex is coming because the water in the cups starts shaking? My cups of water do that. I'm not even joking. And her steps actually sound like the T-Rex - more boom than thunk, really. Over and over and fucking over. And I have no idea how she manages to be so loud. I stood in my room and tried to recreate the noises she makes. It required a weird jump-step-stomp to make quite the same echoing bang, and I could only keep it up for a couple of strides. What is she made out of?
But, I thought, how bad is it, really? She seems to stop around midnight to go to sleep, and start up again around 8 or 8:30, usually waking up me up by slamming her door and stomping down the hall to the bathroom. But that's 8 hours of sleep for me. Sure, I would prefer more, but it's not going to kill me. And she leaves for work around 9 a.m., and I don't come back from work until 9 p.m., so I decided to just deal with it: clamp my headphones over my ears and ignore her. It seemed too awkward to go knock on her door and be like, "Hi, I'm your neighbor, and I was just wondering - do you think you could walk differently? I don't know what exactly you're doing, but it's fucking loud and if you don't stop I think I'm going to end up sleeping outside just to get away from you. Thanks!"
And then. I was woken this morning at 3:25 (let me repeat: 3:25 IN THE FUCKING MORNING) because my bed was shaking. Well, not really shaking. More rattling every other second. As I woke, my first thought was, of course, "Shit, it's a T-Rex! Or an earthquake!" Alas, it was just my neighbor. She was up and pacing. AT 3:25 IN THE FUCKING MORNING. I tried to ignore it and go back to sleep. But the boomboomboomboomboom pause boomboomboomboom was impossible to ignore. Finally, at 3:45, I got up and went to ask her to cut it the fuck out. Politely. I stood in front of my door inside my room, tracking her movements back and forth as I tried to compose a polite way to ask that she stop moving around. "Hi, I'm your neighbor next door. I know it's late," (EARLY!) "but I couldn't help but hear your movements in your room. Do you think you could quiet down, a little? I need some sleep. I'm really sorry. I don't really mind during the day," (you weird T-Rex-human hybrid) "but your steps seem really loud and it's so early and I just want to sleep." I am not very coherent that early in the morning.
So, I finally made it to the hallway. I really creepily looked under her door to see if her light was on to make really sure that she was the one doing this before I knocked on her door at 3:45 in the morning. It was. So I knocked lightly but firmly, four times. There was no answer. I waited for about 15 seconds, which is much longer than you think, and then knocked again, five times this time, and a little louder. Again, no answer. "Hello?" I stage-whispered. Nothing. I had no idea what to do. I stood there awkwardly for another minute, then went back to my room, crestfallen. I really psyched myself out for that, and then, nothing.
Strangely, when I got back in I realized she had stopped. I stood there for a couple of minutes to make sure it wasn't a fluke, but though I could hear rustles from over next door, (seriously, what are the walls made of here? Cardboard?) there was no more T-Rex stomping. So, I went back to bed.
This makes me wonder - did she hear me knocking? And ignore me out of terror/knowledge of her ridiculous stride, but quiet down because she knew why I was knocking? She was definitely still up and moving, but not nearly as loudly. And, what do I do for the rest of the summer? I'm here until August - do I just go and knock on her door when she's bothering me at ridiculous hours, and hope she never answers but is nonetheless quiet? Is it ever okay to bang on the wall to try and get her to stop? She might know that I'm irritated, or she might think that I'm hanging a poster or killing a spider or just being a bitch. What do I do?
