Tough Things

It is tough to have neighbor problems. My brother owns the house but lives far away. He said to go ahead and move because there seems no other solution, if I cannot find cars to park out front to keep them from parking there.

This house is different, smaller than others on the block, garage out back, shoving the house out close to the sidewalk and the curb. This also creates curb space the other houses do not have. This is alluring to people like the ones who moved into the end of the cul de sac, to use my curb space to park their excessive vehicles and overnight visitor vehicles.

I am not clear even on who really occupies that house, there are so many different cars overnighting with people at different times.

Having a bedroom a few feet from the street has been ok, since the street has had normal people so far. But now, I feel terribly vulnerable at night and when they roar in and out, parking out front, I'm awakened over and over. This has caused me great stress. Some nights are worse than others. The two incidents with them, out front of my bedroom, have made me realize this is not safe now. And that these aren't your normal neighbors at all.

I have always had to defend my own space. Nobody has my back and never has. This is a concern for me, as I get older---safety.

I lay with my cats surrounding me last night and realized how quickly things can change.

I am going to try to ignore them and work hard to find somewhere else to live, somewhere I can feel safe. In the meantime, I hope they leave. Wouldn't that be too easy to hope for? But I am hoping it.

If I have to, I'll drug myself so I don't react to their obnoxiousness and noise. And I'll work to find somewhere safe to live.

I have gone through every ad in the paper and on craigslist today, but this is student move in time, so maybe there will be something open once they're all settled in. My brother offered no suggestions other than to just move. I don't see any help coming from my family. They have their own lives and have always expected me to survive or whatever. Both are suffering under this economy I think, although they're not communicative, neither one of them, so I have no idea really.

It's tough on me, to have no sounding board, no back up, nothing and to not know what to do with this neighbor issue, how to stay safe.

I don't know if they're druggees or dangerous or just drunks or just the usual impolite asshole young people of the day who don't care who they keep awake, etc. It's very hard to know these things. I only know what I witness and what I've witnessed since they began using my place as their parking lot scares me in the night. That's what I have to go on.

Most people do not want anyone out front of their bedroom in the night and would, if so violated, react in the same manner or even worse. My brother would never in a million years tolerate it. Someone just told me about a couple who bought a house a few blocks from here. There is a person with a huge honking truck who has parked that truck in front of other people's places. But, when the new couple moved in, that guy was angry and confronted the young man, ordered to move it or else, and by god the guy moved it from the curb in front of his place. Nobody wants their space violated by others, because they have so many vehicles they park them in front of someones elses' house. It's selfish and its wrong.

Since home owners have to maintain the city sidewalks in front of their property it might make sense if homeowners were allowed to install parking meters in front of their residential houses. The homeowners visitors would not be charged while others would be or they could be cited. I think its a great solution to this constant problem of people with excessive vehicles parking in front of other people's places.