This Body is Bullshit

I’m Not In Her Walls

We had just gotten back from our happy place — a long weekend with some of our favorite people, the kind that sends you home actually recharged for once. I was pulling into the driveway, still in that good mood, and I saw my neighbor across the street. We’ve always been friendly. Casual. She helped us out a lot after my mastectomy — walked Gus, my 170-pound lovebug of a mastiff, when I couldn’t. She was there when I was in the hospital and Matt was juggling everything alone. We’d had drinks on her patio, laughed together, been good neighbors to each other. So I rolled down my window and said hey, happy Memorial Day.

She stared at me like I had five heads.

I chalked it up to her being… her. She’s always been a little different. Quirky. A lot of childhood trauma, some emotional stuff. Odd, but in a harmless way — or so I thought. I gave her space. She ignored me, I let her. Fine.

Then things got weird.

We started hearing her screaming inside the house. Not arguing — screaming. At her husband, at nothing, we couldn’t always tell. Doors slamming. Things crashing. Her back storm door ended up on the curb one day, just broken and discarded. She started blasting music in the backyard loud enough to bother the neighbors next to her. She yelled and swore at people walking past with their dogs. She cornered new neighbors demanding to know what the cocksucker neighbors were saying about her. Apparently she’s been telling the whole block that’s what we are. Charming.

Then one morning I went out for the garbage cans and she came over like nothing had happened. I thought maybe she was coming out of it. She asked if I’d been having trouble with my phone or internet. I said no. Then she told me she was on her third phone — all bugged. That Charlie had wires all over the house and was trying to make her crazy. And then she told me that my voice had been tormenting her through her speakers for months.

My voice. Through her speakers. For months.

She believes I’m living in her walls somehow, using AI to harass her.

I kept a straight face. Barely. I got inside and called our neighbor Teri immediately. Turns out she’d gotten a version of the same conversation — voices in the house — plus an accusation that Teri, who works for NASA, had been moving satellites to mess with their electricity. Teri said she actually shut the power off in her house for two hours trying to locate the source.

It would be funny if it wasn’t so sad. But it’s both, honestly.

There’s a part of me that feels genuine compassion — she’s clearly in crisis and she needs help. And there’s a part of me that’s just creeped out and a little annoyed, and I think both of those are allowed.

Because now she sits outside every night in a chair facing our house. Just sits there. No book, no phone. Staring. A few times during dinner she’s come into the parkway with her hands on her hips, just watching us through the windows. My dad was over once and we kept having to tell him to stop looking back at her because it felt like we were one eye-contact away from a suburban standoff.

At a friend’s urging, Matt and I went to the police station — not to get her in trouble, just to get something on record. The officer was kind. Told us this was the fourth time something had been reported related to her. The good news is our town now has a social worker on staff and she’s been referred.

I hope she gets help. I genuinely do. But I also need to feel safe in my own home, and right now I don’t entirely. I’m tired of looking over my shoulder. I’m tired of trying to hold compassion and self-protection at the same time like they don’t constantly contradict each other.

This isn’t quirky neighbor stuff anymore. It’s unsettling. And it’s exhausting.

And for the record: I’m not in her walls.