I’m friends with my upstairs neighbor.

But the ones on the third floor are ingrained in my hallucinations and delusions.

I have no idea why there is such a drastic difference in my perception of the two different apartments and the people they hold.

I think a lot of it stems from being accused of something I didn’t do by the third floor neighbors last December.

That really fucking spiked a low tolerance for the two folks who live in the third floor apartment above me.

It sparked my paranoia like a motherfucker.

And the two of them still spike my paranoia when I see them.

My heart starts racing when I hear them up there or see them come home.

I wear earbuds outside when I smoke more times than not to try to drown out the voices, but it doesn’t always work.

I can still hear them most times, it’s just more obvious that it’s a hallucination with the earbuds in.

Especially when I see the third floor people’s cars in the lot.

And I just seriously don’t even glance up there since that incident the other week where she had no memory or clue of me going off on them the day before.

Because I was apparently talking to my hallucinations.

I went off on them for talking about me and the next day they didn’t recall anything like that happening.

And now I can’t trust what I’m seeing.

Again.

It’s scary.

Really scary some days.

That episode really threw me off because I do feel like my medication is helping but when I have situations like that, I start to question everything.

But why is my other neighbor considered safe to my delusional mind?

Why do my symptoms pick out certain people to fixate on?

I don’t have an answer to that.

It’s just curious and shows how random my symptoms are.

There’s no real pattern that I can decipher.

My symptoms absolutely pick up on random small things that I’ll think about.

It’s like having an obsessive thought that won’t let go, times a hundred.

And then starts to manifest as “real” in random situations.

It’s like my mind takes that thought and blows it up.

Obsesses on it until my mind twists it into a fact.

I’ve been bothered by my neighbors like how I am now in many, many places that I’ve lived over the years.

They’re always “harassing” me.

Well, looking back it was all just my symptoms.

But I’ve discussed the behavior of my neighbors with landlords and roommates since forever.

And there was never any rhyme or reason to who would be picked out.

I lived in one space where the neighbors would talk about me on the back stoop, by the back door.

I now know no one was probably ever out there, and if they were I’m sure that they weren’t talking about me.

I had one neighbor that used to mock me all the time out of her back window.

Now I know that anything like that was coincidental if it happened at all.

But in all of the places I’ve lived I’ve also had neighbors that were friends or that I was friendly with.

Their presence would never spark my symptoms.

There’s no pattern besides the neighbor aspect.

Which it’s almost unavoidable to have neighbors.

And maybe that’s why.

There’s like a forced relationship between people who don’t know one another and who seemingly have to interact at times.

A forced friendliness that would probably never occur if I wasn’t neighbors with these people.

Maybe it has to do with my surveillance delusion.

The feeling that people are watching and stalking me when they’re really just close by.

My symptoms just seem to pick such random things to become paranoid and anxious about.

Because it’s not just my direct neighbors, it’s everywhere I go.

There’s a certain apartment on the walk I take Bruce on everyday that always spikes my hallucinations and “talks” about me and what I’m doing.

Narrating and commenting on my actions like my voices do.

It’s usually the same female voice that sounds like no one I remember hearing in my life.

Which makes it seem like it could possibly actually be happening because I don’t recognize the voice.

But she usually comments on how gross I am after I pick up Bruce’s poos, or comments about me putting my cigarette out (which I never throw on the ground but she blames me for doing it anyway).

But most of the rest of the walk isn’t specifically from one place like that.

The rest of the walk I usually hear bits and pieces, random accusations or comments, but they don’t come from a specific apartment, they’re more just kind of floating and moving from one side of my head to the other.

Again, it’s seemingly random.

I wish I could narrow everything down with a series of patterns, but I really don’t think that’s entirely possible.

And unfortunately, if it’s not a neighbor, my delusions and hallucinations will just pop up as something else.

– Keren