In my own day-to-day living I behave pretty much the same way as I do online as I do at home. I'm a regular woman, with regular hopes and dreams and a lifestyle to match. I have my dark moments, yes, but I have been able to find a certain sort of peace within myself as well. I'm loyal, tend to think before I speak, and bite my tongue far more often than bite the heads off of others when I'm pissed off.
I know how to stand up for myself and am a firm believer in self-defense. I feel that if you fail to be self-assertive, you're opening the windows for more potshots to come.
There's two women who I barely know who are bothering me. The first is the girl who lives in the apartment below me. We've had words about garbage and recycling, but for the most part, are cordial towards each other. I try to keep my business my own, but she's getting more demanding. Soon, I am going to have to set her straight on how I see our current issues. The second is a woman who supposedly looks a lot like me and is very... uh... 'popular' at the dives around town. She's slutty, yes, but that's not my main concern. I'm not too concerned about how she behaves in her own personal life, but I take affront when people relate her actions as mine.
So, how do I rectify the issues? Well, admittedly, in the latter situation, there really isn't much that I can do about it. The people whose opinions I care about know me, and know my relationship style. Even if I was whoring it up around town, aside from safety concerns, most people that I know would not be so judgemental to condemn me for it. I really can't do anything about it and I'm certainly not about to hunt her down to give her hell for it either. I can also see the humorous side of it all.
In the former situation though, I feel that I must say something soon. She's been complaining about me to everyone, and its starting to go too far. And, frankly, her complaints are stemming from something altogether separate from me.
She's got a boyfriend, who owns 3 pitbulls. At the beginning of the summer they were running loose in the yard and my sister made a complaint about it. Several times. After my neice's incident with a terrier, she wasn't taking any chances with dogs that looked like they could swallow Skylar whole. Succinctly, housing is for single people with kids, no pets are allowed, and she was letting them shit all over the lawn where 6 separate families let their children play.
So, after attempting to settle the situation between the girl and was met with no response, my sister went to the housing management and lodged several complaints. End result: dogs are gone, and coincidentally, now she's starting to talk about me and my girl.
Apparently, after us living above her for 2 years, we are now too loud. We run around in the house too much. And she's enquiring after every neighbor about what kind of noise they can hear from us. She's not fooling anyone. Everyone knows how often I'm not at home. I'm at work, or at other relatives' places far more often. But she's not big enough to actually come discuss it with me. Only with everyone else.
I'm furious, actually. Furious, because I take big strides to keep uninvolved in our community and I hate being the centre of gossip now. I am polite, but I'm no pushover. I've been mulling the situation over, and am wanting to keep things level, but need to set things right. Hmmm... what to do?