The day I realized that I’m the problem

The day I realized that I’m the problem

Picture this: It’s a lovely Saturday morning in early spring. The weather is finally warm enough to sit outside without a jacket, the sun is shining, the grass is green, you’re so excited to sit outside with a book and a cup of coffee and soak in that Vitamen D. And then….

beep beep beep.

You look to your left, look to your right, shrug, take a sip of coffee and then return to your book. Approximately thirty seconds later…

beep beep beep.

You do your best to ignore it, thinking perhaps someone is backing up or an alarm is going off, but after a few minutes, it’s still consistently every thirty seconds.

beep beep beep.

I, hopefully like yourself in that scenario, was so throughly annoyed that I was seeing flames. What kind of person doesn’t know that their alarm has been beeping for this long? How inconsiderate. How rude. I was huffing around my backyard, looking over the fence to see if I could find out what on earth could be making such an annoying noise.

beep beep beep.

I stomped my way through the fence, eyes squinted, mad at the whole world for this grave offense on my quiet Saturday morning. I mean, honestly? What gives my neighbors the right to annoy me on a weekend? This was Wednesday activities on a Saturday is what it was, and I was about to get to the bottom of it.

beep beep beep.

Other neighbors had begun to trickle out of their houses, pretending to water gardens or take out the trash, when in reality, we were all on the lookout for the culprit of the beeping situation. We shrugged at one another, indicating with our faces that we had no clue what the noise was, but it wasn’t our house that was eliciting such a godforsaken noise. Not that we’d ever speak to each other with real words, neighbors are only for awkward waves and hurried hellos, after all.

beep beep beep.

It continued for hours on end, so loud that I could hear it in my living room with the TV on. Something that ground my gears more than anything, as you could imagine, because if I can’t be outside, then I should at least have the right to peacefully waste away in front of the flatscreen in my own home, should I not?

beep beep beep.

This situation was escalating in my head, my teeth clenched and the muttering well underway. It got to the point where I left for five hours, running unnecessary errands all over town, and telling all my friends about the absolute dolt of a neighbor who was causing me so much annoyance. When I came back, wouldn’t you know it?

beep beep beep.

I stomped into the house with so much hate in my heart, that you’d have thought I was directing it toward something actually useful. You see, minor inconveniences when you’re already majorly inconvenienced every day become so much bigger than they actually are. This beeping, although minor and maybe a 3/10 on the annoyance scale, had now become a 10/10 in my overdramatic need to be angry at something. Everything else that caused me annoyance could not be fixed, there was no cure for those, but this?

beep beep beep.

This could not only be fixed, but it would have already been dealt with if the person who was the cause of this problem had any semblance of decency toward anyone but themselves. I built this neighbor up in my head. This self-centered son-of-a-mum who was out living their life, probably on vacation or something, while the rest of us suffered from their inability to think about anyone but themselves.

beep beep beep.

Mm, I hope you understand where this story is headed.

beep beep beep.

Here I was, seething. Muttering. Cursing. Letting my face show my annoyance, so, in case my other neighbors are watching, they’ll have seen that I was big mad about this entire situation. Very performative in retrospect, but the beeping also felt like the omen for the end of the world (I might have a flare for the dramatics, but whatever)

beep beep beep.

When all of a sudden, I fling my trash bin open to toss my garbage, and… beep beep beep.

No.

No, this can’t be.

beep beep beep.

My discarded smoke detector echoed loudly down the street, each shrill tonal beep a stab right through my neighbor-hating heart. It was only right that I had to dig through garbage bags filled with dog poop and two-week-old leftovers in order to get my hands on the traitorous object. That was my penance for a Saturday spent hoping the worst fate of warm-sides pillows and cold showers onto a mysterious nobody who, by my calculations, deserved it at the time.

beep beep beep.

The walk of shame with the thing beeping in my hand was the worst humiliation ritual I could have ever bestowed upon my enemy. However, I held my head high and walked with all the dignity I could muster (literally no one was looking, and no one but me cared, but boy did I perform for that invisible audience!)

beep beep beep.

Moral of the story?

Everyone needs something or someone else to blame, when most of the time, the culprit of our unhappiness is ourselves.

Maybe dig through your own trash before deciding someone else is the problem.

beep beep beep.

Photo by Sven Brandsma on Unsplash