I got my neighbor to stop playing piano. She thinks I was the only person who enjoyed hearing her practice.

About a year ago, a woman moved into the apartment directly below mine and started learning piano. She had an upright piano, not a keyboard, and three or four evenings a week she'd practice for about half an hour. At first it was fine. Then she started working on this one piece that had a section she clearly couldn't get right. She'd play the same twenty seconds, make a mistake, stop, start over. Sometimes she'd get a little further and then mess up somewhere else. Over and over. I work from home, and by the time I finished for the day I just wanted to sit on my couch and watch something without hearing the same handful of notes coming through the floor. The thing is, she wasn't playing at unreasonable hours. Usually somewhere between 6 and 7 PM. Never particularly late. I could have knocked on her door and talked to her. Instead I emailed our building manager. And this is the part I'm actually ashamed of. I exaggerated. I said there was loud piano music for hours every evening and that it was making it difficult to work. Neither of those things was really true. It was maybe thirty minutes, and I was usually done working by then. But I figured if I described it accurately, nobody would do anything. The manager contacted her. I don't know exactly what was said, but the piano stopped. Beautiful, glorious silence. A couple of weeks later I ran into her in the laundry room. She mentioned that someone in the building had complained about her playing, and she seemed genuinely embarrassed. She said she'd been taking lessons for the first time in her life and hadn't realized the sound traveled that much. She'd bought a digital piano so she could practice with headphones. Then she said, "I hope it wasn't bothering you too." And for some reason, instead of just saying that I understood why she needed to practice quietly, I said: "Oh, actually, I liked hearing you play." I HAVE NO IDEA WHY I SAID THAT. She looked so relieved. She said, "Really? You're the first person who's told me that." Apparently she'd been worried the whole building hated her. After that we'd occasionally chat when we ran into each other. She'd tell me how her lessons were going. A few months ago she mentioned that she was going to play in a little recital her teacher organized for adult students. She invited me. I went. And here's the thing that makes me feel even worse: she was actually pretty good. She played the piece I'd spent weeks complaining about. I recognized the section she used to get stuck on. She got through it perfectly. I sat there clapping for someone whose practice I'd deliberately made sound much worse than it was, just so I could have a quiet evening. Afterward she thanked me for coming and said it meant a lot to have someone from the building there. I feel like such a fraud. I don't regret wanting some peace in my own apartment. I still think living next to an acoustic piano can be annoying. But I regret lying about how bad it was. And I really regret letting her believe I was this supportive neighbor who'd been rooting for her all along. She gave me a little printed program from the recital. It's currently sitting on my bookshelf. Every time I look at it I remember that she was probably a lot more reasonable about the whole situation than I was. Nobody knows I sent that complaint. And now I'm apparently her biggest fan.