This story kind of starts when I was a little kid. I always had digestive issues, always sick and back and forth to the doctor. At one point my doc suggested trying me out on a lactose and meat free diet. Parents didn't like that and took me to someone else who eventually suggested the same thing. Over time they stopped trying to help me.
When I was old enough to get it and sick of being sick all the time I started testing things myself. I stopped eating red meat to begin with, then white meats, eventually cut out dairy and I hardly ever got sick anymore. Meals were pretty boring because it was basically just the vegetable portion of the rest of the family's meals, but I started learning to cook for myself. When I was 15 I got a job and started buying the kinds of foodstuffs my parents thought were unnessesary, like tofu and vegan meats, cheese, almond milk etc. I'd plan out my meals and buy the things I needed for that week.
The thing is, my family will just use the things I buy. I'm at school all day and work most evenings/on weekends, and I'll come home to make dinner but half the ingredients will be gone. My mom will run out of cheese and just use mine - which is okay, but the stuff is $4 for 15 slices and she uses it on everyone's (6 people) sandwiches. Two days and it's all gone. She'll use the vegetables I buy in dinner that I can't eat. This also wouldn't be a problem, but she doesn't leave any leftovers. A head of broccoli would last me all week, but she uses it in a night.
At first she told me she was just confused about what she had bought and what I had so I started putting things in a plastic tub in the refrigerator. But she kept using it, and now the response is "you're not the only person in this house, you don't pay bills, it's not a big deal if I use X". Sometimes it seems like they use my things just to spite me, like I bought an eggplant which she apparently tried to use but messed it up so she threw the whole thing away, or she tried to bake with my almond milk but it didn't come out right (but she used the rest of the carton and won't replace it).
I don't know, maybe these things seem petty but can't I just feed myself? The whole reason they didn't want to change my diet was because it would be too much of an inconvenience. I pay for my food now, and they're making it inconvienient for me to maintain my diet by eating all the food it was too "inconvienient" for them to buy and use.
The last straw came yesterday. It was an older friend of mine's birthday. They're young and live alone and are very low income so we (me and other friends) wanted to help out and make sure they had a good time on their birthday. They're also vegan (for different reasons) so we ordered three boxes of these fancy fuck cupcakes for this party from a vegan bakery that shuts at midday on weekends. Another friend of mine picked them up in the morning on the way to work and dropped them at my place because he'd be picking me up after.
He came back to pick me up, we went to retrieve the cupcakes from the fridge and oh, a box is missing. I called my parents (who had disappeared at some point) and it turns out they took them for lunch at a family friend's house. I got upset obviously, because it wasn't for them to take and I hadn't even bought the things! I was just storing them for the day! And somehow again I'm being difficult and ungrateful to them.
Thank god the other two boxes were pushed back and behind things or they probably would have taken them too, and thank god someone else was also bringing a cake.
I just don't even know how to express to them that... It's not cool to do what they're doing? They always make me feel like I'm just being a brat if I dare complain about them using my things without asking. I seriously cannot afford to replace food at the rate they go through it, and they don't replace my things in return.
TL;DR: I guess my non-vegan family keeps using the vegan food I buy without asking me first, but they're not the ones who will end up with something akin to dysentery if they don't eat it. How can I make them see that this is a shitty thing for them to be doing?
Submitted January 31, 2016 at 11:04PM by angstyvego http://ift.tt/1nx9kvc relationships
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