Wednesday, January 17, 2018

Flashback of the day raisedbynarcissists

I read that excel sheet post and it reminded me of a similar experience I had.

As a teen, N and I lived in a microscopic apartment. Not only did I not have my own room, I didn't even get a bed. I slept on armchairs pushed together each night.

The apartment was so tiny that it didn't even have a full sized refrigerator, and the tiny stove and sink that passed for a "kitchen" was fitted into the 5 foot hallway between the bedroom and the living room.

Space was a priority, and even the smallest thing out of place made the whole kitchen feel cluttered and chaotic.

Both my N and myself HATED doing dishes. As a child, the dishes were always my chore because my N cooked-- "when you do the cooking, I'll do the dishes, but you're too young now". I started cooking at 4 and was a decent cook by 10, and Since my N hated cooking and was usually on weird diets, I did 90% of the cooking by age 12ish-- the other 10% being takeout and frozen dinners.

I was still stuck doing the dishes but as I got older I challenged my N on this since I was doing the cooking and dishes. Not only this but my N preferred my cooking and often made special requests, like apple pie at 10am or ground turkey stir fry at midnight. My N didn't want to take on the dishes because "you eat so much more than I do which makes more dishes," I countered that I usually rinsed and reused the same bowl all day. After lots of teenage bickering, my N agreed on a compromise: we would each clean any dishes that were created or used in anything that was solely for us and that for shared dishes, whoever didn't cook would do the dishes.

This worked fine for a while, until one day.

My N had requested lots of individual dishes that day including some baking. This generated a lot of dishes. My N left the bedroom, saw our tiny sink AND some counterspace taken over by dishes, and my N began yelling and shouting about what a disgusting fat lazy slob I was. She tiredherself out and went back to the bedroom, so I took out the one bowl, silverware, and glass I had used as well as the bakeware because my N had offered me a piece of it even though it had been all for her. The sink was STILL FULL of Ns dishes cups etc.

I brought my stuff into the bedroom and told my N that these were ALL of the joint dishes AND my dishes. She asked (rhetorically) where all the other dishes had come from, and I listed back all of the things she had asked to eat that day.

She shut up and did those dishes.

In the end she foisted all the cooking and cleaning back onto me :-( but the moment was good while it lasted!



Submitted January 18, 2018 at 01:33AM by rbnthrowawayrbn http://ift.tt/2mGtxQO raisedbynarcissists

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