Our theme for the month of March is “cities.”
I’ve lived in the same apartment for a little over three years, and I’ve only seen my next-door neighbor once.
I know she used to have a dog, but it seems mysteriously quiet over there now, and I worry it has passed away. I know she works from home some days but not all, and that she typically does her laundry around the same time as me. I know she listens to the same podcasts and artists that I do and calls her friends when she needs to vent and sometimes orders her groceries from Target. I know that she too spends most Friday nights vacuuming and watching Netflix. We’ve never met, but her presence next door helps me feel less alone.
The woman downstairs moved in about a year ago and remodeled her outdoor porch. She loves to have her girlfriends over for wine, and they always sound like they’re having the best time. She has globe lights hung in the trees that are left on 24/7, but she never complains about my dog’s tendency to play fetch at all hours, so it balances out. I’m pretty sure she owns a party planning company, which explains the excellent energy of her get-togethers.
The guys across the hall attend the college nearby, and I see them every now and then for a quick hello. I’m not sure how many of them actually live there, but they’re relatively quiet for college students, and they seem to take care of each other.
The girl upstairs is the most fascinating by far—she’s hardly ever home, but when she is, it sounds as if she’s moving all her furniture. Constantly. Usually at 3 a.m. I’ve always been a bit envious of her porch—its hanging swing is a dream of mine. I can see her potted plants, and I wonder how they survive since she’s never there to water them.
I see my neighbors’ mail accumulate, know where they shop online and their Uber Eats go-tos. I can hear them wash their dishes and do laundry and call their loved ones. I see them leaving for work or school and coming home with Chick-Fil-A breakfast on a Saturday morning. I see and hear all these intimate moments of their lives, and they see mine.
They watched me bring home a dog and attempt to train him not to bark every time I open the door, and they see me almost drop everything when I’m determined to get all my groceries in one trip. They know I travel a lot because I’m regularly struggling to launch my suitcase into the trunk of my car. They also know I waited three years to switch my license plates from Missouri to Tennessee (whoops).
It’s oddly comforting to hear other lives going on outside of mine, especially as I work from home full-time. Cities can feel incredibly lonely at times—the hustling and bustling of everyone else seemingly having somewhere to be and someone to go there with—but the proximity of my neighbors doing something so simple as listening to music or doing laundry or calling their best friend makes me feel normal. My neighbors don’t know me, and I don’t know them, but we are all a part of the daily fabric of each other’s lives.
I’m very grateful to have friends in Nashville who do know me, whom I’ve invited into my life and home and who have done the same for me. I do sometimes have somewhere to go and someone to go there with—am sometimes folded into the fabric of the city. But not always, and for those moments, I am grateful for my neighbors—living life alongside me but separate, reminding me that I’m never truly alone.
Olivia graduated from Calvin in May 2018 with a double major in business and writing. She now works as an editor in Nashville, Tennessee and is eating her way through the restaurants of her new town. She enjoys weekend trips with friends, petting other people’s dogs, and drinking coffee like a Gilmore Girl.
