To: Resident Services
Subject: Neighbor complaint

My millennial neighbor’s future is incredibly bright, and it is shining right into my apartment. Due to my recent divorce and subsequent loss of identity, I have developed a real, not made up sensitivity to the vivid, glowing promise of young talented people. Living next to her could cause lasting damage to my corneas and/or dignity. I can only assume it is a violation of some ordinance that one of your residents be put in close proximity to a known allergen. Therefore, for health reasons, I am requesting that she be moved.

The glaring light of her future, full of so much untapped potential, is somehow managing to come through every window on all sides of my apartment, defying the laws of logic and physics. I didn’t notice it when I moved in. I thought she was a college drop out. She is, but seems to have a real eye for web design and is going to enter her 24th year debt-free. That knowledge has given me three migraine headaches this month alone.

I was erroneously led to believe that a good education would lead to a good life. It seems that this girl was raised to believe that you can follow your own personal happiness. Watching her do so has forced me to double up my Prozac dose.

I tried blackout curtains to block out the dazzling light coming from her infinite possibilities, but I can still hear her playing vinyl Jack White albums, and the sound is deafening. Maybe she can switch apartments with Doris from B12? Doris is well into her 50s and has all but given up on real fulfillment. Her life will provide a much better backdrop for me as I use what’s left of my dwindling youth to stage a career change as a stand-up comic.

Her future is also effecting my dating life, as the brightness coming from next door casts a shadow of doubt across my threshold whenever I open the door for a man, and by contrast makes everything in my home appear drab and unattractive, including my children.

Speaking of my children, each day that they are exposed to the neighbor’s abundant optimism, they look at me more and more like an outdated piece of furniture. “Doris is the outdated piece of furniture!” I try to tell them, but they just look at me confused, and then ask where Daddy is.

Please address this health risk immediately. Normally I wouldn’t complain, because I have low self-esteem and don’t often advocate for myself, but the past week has been unbearable. Last Monday, she yelled over to me that she would be out of town for a few days because she’d been cast as an extra on Portlandia, and asked if could I keep an eye on her bonsai trees, which she has named Fitz and Saffron. I have been sick to my stomach ever since, and am unable to go to work.

And that is why I haven’t paid the rent.