Friends

 

 

 

These days, I’m starting to feel like Mr. Heckles.

For anyone who has watched the early seasons of Friends, you can maybe relate. Mr. Heckles lived in the apartment below the fictional Friends gang (Ross, Rachel, Monica, Chandler, Phoebe and Joey). Mr. Heckles was the cranky old man who complained about hearing stomping from Monica’s apartment above him.

I’m 34 and living alone in a 1-bedroom apartment, and I find myself transforming into this same cranky old man, because the neighbors above me are also stompers.

I swear, every night around 8:30 or 9 pm, I start to hear this rumbling noise from above. I moved into this apartment in July, and it’s now December, and I’m beginning to realize this stomping situation is not getting any better. I had hoped it was just a phase: new neighbors moving in, perhaps, moving boxes, getting settled. But maybe what’s really to blame are just thin ceilings.

That doesn’t stop me from pulling a Mr. Heckles and making up all these stories in my head that the neighbors above are just out to get me. That they are purposely making noise to make my life a living hell. So there are days when I just yell out in my apartment, hoping they’ll hear me, “SOMEONE LIVES BELOW YOU!” I’ve even succumbed to the classic Heckles move, pounding the bottom of a broom on the ceiling to try to compete with the upstairs noise.

Friends has been on my mind lately. It’s a show that I started watching in High School, and that I have used throughout the years as a sort of security blanket, a thing I could turn on to make everything right in the world for just a few moments.

But Friends has been on my mind lately for other reasons. With the sudden passing of Matthew Perry, the actor who played Chandler, a character I came to almost see as my own friend (that’s what watching every episode five times over will do to the lonely mind), I’ve also been thinking about Friends in terms of addiction. My addiction, Matthew Perry’s addiction (which has only been brought up because of the timeliness of his death, and which has not been confirmed as a reason for his death).

I’m starting to view the show differently these days. Because while I’d come to know the characters as friends in some fantasy world of mine that I’d go to when I needed to get away from the messiness of real life, I’m now appreciating the fact that the characters on screen are real humans with real lives and real human struggles.

I’m realizing that Matthew Perry and I share a very real struggle.

When I first started watching Friends, it had nothing to do with my addiction. It was years before my drinking got out of hand, and the problems I were tending to had more to do with a broken heart than a hangover.

Although I guess in a way, those first loves can themselves become somewhat of an addiction. At least for me, with my sensitive heart and my tendency to overthink, I latched on to one of those early relationships, and the baggage and weight and heartbreak over the course of a decade started to fester and feed my need to numb, to check out, to escape.

So Friends became the background noise that would lull me to sleep on restless nights, thanks to the accessibility provided by streaming services. (In earlier times, I had to wait for Christmas each year to get the next season’s set of DVDs).

On some of my darkest nights, the only thing that got me through to the morning was getting lost in the comedic genius that is Friends. I may be biased, but I think the fact that the show was so successful means that there was something special about it, something different, something that all genres of entertainment seek to reproduce: a momentary escape from the troubles of life.

No one can argue that the chemistry between the actors, the perfectly fine-tuned personalities of each character, was anything but the rare result of the collaboration of many talented writers, actors, producers and countless others who worked together to help bring solace to viewers of the show.

But I now find myself watching Chandler more closely. Looking for clues that the actor that played him was struggling with the same affliction I’ve struggled with.

The truth is that, like an actor on a show, I too tried to present this image of myself to the world that was a far cry from the battles I fought in the privacy of my own home. I sought to climb the ladder in my career, gathering letters behind my name in the hopes that all those letters could hide what was really going on. That the piece of paper I presented with all my accomplishments was enough to hide the sheer insanity, unmanageability and chaos of my life.

Watching Matthew Perry, I only see a talented actor, delivering lines with a unique punch, acting as a sort of glue which held the cast together. But I wonder at the pain he was living in behind the scenes, what his nights looked like in the quiet of his own bedroom, what demons he battled when he was no longer Chandler Bing.

I guess what I’m wanting to convey is the truth that we all struggle with something. Humanity comes with trials and challenges that maybe are there to help us grow. Pretending to have it all together is fine, but isn’t there more to be said when we can be vulnerable and authentic and real, and instead of trying to fit into some image of what we think we are supposed to be, simply bear witness to the beauty of our brokenness?

I write this as above me, I hear the incessant pounding of my upstairs neighbors. I try to stop convincing myself that their whole mission is to make my life miserable. Because really, in doing that, I’m just making it all about me. Maybe instead, I can listen to the stomping and find solace in the fact that I’m not alone—that just one floor above me, there is life and movement and someone else who has a story and a purpose in this world.

Like the theme song to the show says, “So no one told you life was gonna be this way.”

But we aren’t alone in this world. There’s always someone who can say, “I’ll be there for you, cause you’re there for me too.”