On Neighbors

Overthinking about shared reality, superficial conversations, and what we owe each other.

Okay, so I lied about the audio project I mentioned last week. I am still working on it, but it likely won’t come out for another week or so! Work has become unexpectedly crazy, so I’m trying to hold it all together. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy a little essay about neighbors, superficial relationships, and loneliness. 

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Earlier this week, I was waiting for the elevator in my apartment building. Even though the building has hundreds of units, it’s actually somewhat rare to share the elevator with other people. But that day, a woman came out of the laundry room and waited with me. I did the polite thing—the American thing? The DC thing? The Utah-bred thing?—and smiled at her and then stared straight ahead. 

“I like your sandals,” she said to me.

“Oh, thank you,” I said. And then, since I’m a freak about compliments, I went my usual route: either follow up with an insult to myself or make some practical comment. I chose the latter. “They’re very comfortable.”

“I bet,” she said. “That’s the trick, isn’t it? Finding cute and comfortable all at once.”

“Right,” I said. The elevator arrived. “It’s nice in this weather.”

It’s nice in this weather? What does that even mean? The woman didn’t seem to notice, and once the elevator doors closed, I asked how her day had been to make conversation for our short ride together—and to distract from my nonsensical comment.

The problem is: I have always kind of sucked at keeping conversations superficial. And therefore, I kind of suck at superficial relationships, which are kind of a given when you live in a huge building in a huge city. It depends on the day for me, of course—sometimes I’m smooth with a good little chat about something going on in the building, and other times I can’t put together a sentence. I’ve thought about these surface-level encounters over the past year or so, especially after reading “Always Talk to Strangers” in The Atlantic. The article is about ten years old, but I swear I read it sometime last year, so I wonder if they reposted it—especially as the term “loneliness epidemic” started to enter the zeitgeist.

The article’s specific claim is that people are less likely to have heart attacks if they get to know their neighbors. But to zoom out a little, the data seems to indicate that when people feel more connected to the community, even in shallow ways—like a little chat by the elevator—it’s good for their physical and mental health. Even a perceived connection is beneficial. Fair warning: the article itself is pretty goofy, but the studies within it are sincere.

I do have a pretty good community within my apartment building. We have a cat-sitting listserv for anyone who needs help while they’re on a trip, and I’ve met several actual friends through it (sadly, a few of them have since moved). We have holiday parties. We have several committees. I know many people by name. I have a neighbor down the hall who I pass several times a week, and we always say hello and make some comment about our jobs or the heat. My immediate neighbor is an old man who invites me to a pool he doesn’t own, but he also always asks how my writing is going. I’m friends with the front desk people, and we have a few inside jokes. (Like one time after receiving a package I said, without thinking, “Yippee,” kind of sarcastically, and we both burst out laughing.) 

But even though I do see how I fit in this larger community tapestry, I still struggle with the superficiality of it all. Ever since I was able to form sentences, I’ve wanted to go deep with the people around me. I want their existential questions. I want their fears. I want to discuss the weird thing that happened last week that I haven’t been able to articulate. I’m definitely not the first person who’s wished for deeper connection with people—it’s not unique to say I don’t enjoy small talk. But I do overthink my role in all of it.

I get in my head about what I owe people, and what they owe me. It’s hard to rewrite the American narrative of individuality, even when asking a neighbor to watch my cat while I’m gone. I’m tempted to try to take the relationship a step further: will you watch my cat and do you want to go get a coffee sometime? But I almost never do. I pause at the dynamic, the relationships seeming inverted: shouldn’t I be asking my closest friends for favors? Is this just the job of a neighbor? 

It’s strange to watch people move in and out of my periphery, not knowing anything about them but seeing them almost daily. The man and his Bernese mountain dog that I watched grow from a puppy to a bear in less than a year. The woman who vacuums the hallways every Wednesday. The elderly environmentalist and his aide, walking around the neighborhood. The girl and her cat, prowling the hallway together. There’s the fear of getting close to these people, only for one of us to move away soon after (as mentioned above, that’s happened and it blows). There’s the fear of getting to know each other and not liking each other, and then still seeing each other every day. There’s the exhaustion of keeping up my social life already—how to add another person to the mix? 

I’ve been trading off cat sitting with a specific woman in my building for about a year now. We both know the only reason we’re texting each other is because we need something. We hand off the keys before we leave, have awkward conversations, and then do it all over when we get back. I enter her apartment all the time when she’s gone; almost never when she’s here. I like to sit with cats after feeding them, because I project on them the same loneliness I can feel. Sitting in this stranger’s apartment, I learn more about her than I ever have in a conversation: I glance at her book titles, the pictures hung by magnets on the refrigerator, the stuffed animals on the couch. In some ways, I know this woman intimately, and she knows me by the same types of details. But we never actually talk about any of it. 

In fact, the last time I asked her to watch my cat, I pulled a Cady in Mean Girls and said, “Would that be great?” when I was trying to say “That would be great.” She pretended not to notice and I walked down the hall feeling dizzy. 

I wanted to run back and say, “I am not an awkward person! I just don’t know how to ask people to help me!” I wanted to talk about the books on my bookshelf, the wilting flowers in my vase, the Texas-themed blanket on my chair. Perhaps she remembers these details about me, just as I remember the things I’ve seen in her apartment. I probably don’t take up any of her mental space at all, honestly, but if I do, I have to accept I’ll never know what judgements or assumptions she’s made. I’m just the awkward neighbor who tends to her cat.

In the past couple of years, I’ve felt isolated, and I know I’m not alone in that. I work at home most days, and often when I venture outside, I’m still alone. I see my close friends as often as possible, but there are some days where it’s just…me. And on those days, I feel extremely fulfilled when I see someone I recognize in the hallway and strike up a small conversation. I’m often smiling when I walk away from them, back to my own space. It’s really nice to know I can count on these people to help me, even if I don’t know their childhood traumas. 

In another Atlantic podcast/article called “How to Know Your Neighbors,” the guest, Pete Davis, says, “The amazing thing is that with relationships, it all works the opposite of what our fears are telling us…So, you think giving something away means you lose something. But actually, giving something is a gain.”

I like the feeling of giving to people, helping them in whatever way they need. I love when people ask me for directions. I’ll watch your cat, your dog, your plant. And yet, I get anxious about letting people do the same for me. I have to remember that either way, it’s a gain. Accepting help is just as important as giving help when trying to build community, even on a superficial neighborly level. David continues,

[Neighbors] are fellow subjects. They are also players in the video game of life. They are full of life. They have a depth that you can’t understand. When you really are engaging with them, and you let all of the ways that they measure up or help you or facilitate you or bother you or compare with everything else—when you let that fall away, you’re bathed in the light of their shared reality with you. They’re also there. And even just a small victory in that fight by building a tiny relationship with one other person isn’t a small thing. It’s everything.

All of this reminds me of a time, during the height of the pandemic, when I was walking down the hall, face mask on, towards a door that would lead outside. The hallway is long; the door felt like a trombone shot in a movie, like no matter how close I got to it, it seemed farther away. As I walked, I heard this beautiful piano music coming from one of the apartments. Each day, I’d walk the hall at the same time to hear the melody, until one day I saw a man leave the apartment I suspected the noise came from. 

“Excuse me,” I asked through my mask. “Are you the one who plays the piano?”

He ended up inviting me into his apartment for a night of music. With the windows open to keep the air flowing, I sat and listened to him play. His apartment was well lived in, the walls a macaroni orange, old CDs stacked by the dining room table. He had put out crackers and cheese. He played songs he’d practiced a lot and songs he wanted my opinion on. We chatted for a bit, and then I left, keeping his melody with me as I walked back to my apartment. I haven’t seen him since, and yet, I’ll never forget that moment—this night of song in a period of time that blurs together now. I still listen for the piano through the walls.

This one’s for him, and for the cat sitters, and the people who walk the same loop as me, and the people I pass when throwing out the recycling. I might never really know you, but it’s nice in this weather with you.

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What’s everybody out there doing about their neighbors? Are you making friends? Ignoring each other? Do you have a symbiotic give-and-take relationship like mine?

See you in the hallway,

Abi