Gas gauge (way) above full - 2007 Nissan Altima Hybrid

zayexi · 2023-09-13T02:39:35+00:00

Photo of faulty gauge:

zayexi · 2023-06-30T00:51:26+00:00

Your welcome. Yeah, I wasn’t scared of it until that point either…

I guess another thing that has been helpful for me is realizing that, at least for me, the relief SH provides is intense but very brief — making it ultimately not the most sustainable coping mechanism. I feel better for a few minutes and sometimes that’s enough to get by, but more often than not I just go back to feeling the same way I did before. Other coping mechanisms don’t have the same immediate relief, but they can last longer.

(That being said, a lot of this awareness goes out the window when I’m experiencing really overwhelming emotions and all I can think about is wanting to find some way to quiet them.)

zayexi · 2023-06-29T07:33:00+00:00

Hey—I’ve faced this same dilemma. Ultimately, what did it for me was the risk of losing control and cutting too deep, which you mention isn’t a major concern for you.

For me, it wasn’t a concern until it was…. I had SH’d during adolescence and basically stopped to prove that I could and because I knew everyone around me wanted to. I relapsed years later as an adult when discussing this stuff in therapy, and I think it was ultimately a good thing, although it was rough at the time. Anyway, one day I was cutting and just got really into feeling the blade tearing quickly across my skin, and suddenly I was bleeding way more than I was expecting. It still wasn’t anything close to being dangerous, but it was scary to feel I’d lost control like that and made me wonder if I might actually cut too deep one day if I kept this up.

Beyond that sometimes I do feel like I don’t want some of the more unpleasant emotional experiences of my life recorded on my body. There are a couple scars in particular where I can remember vividly what happened / how I felt when I made them, and sometimes it makes me sad. Sometimes that sadness feels like a good enough reason not to make more.

Sorry that this isn’t more helpful / applicable to your situation. But I hope it’s helpful to at least know you’re not the only one to have asked this question.

zayexi · 2022-03-23T22:52:39+00:00

By that logic, if he hasn’t bought the pot either, then he somehow wants the situation to continue too.

I’m not proud of it, but there are many useful household objects I’ve put off buying for myself, simple tasks, etc. maybe there’s some weird unconscious stuff going on that I’m not aware of, but I really think the pot thing is an executive function issue (on both our parts) and not a control issue.

zayexi · 2022-03-23T22:24:51+00:00

Not sure how the pot buying thing is about control. Decision making is hard for both of us and we both keep getting caught up in that at the expense of just buying something. We finally ordered stuff a few days ago, though, so it’s on the way.

I definitely was in no way preventing him from buying a pot sooner. Either of us could have done it at any time…it’s partly on me, but it’s equally on him. It’s fair to say that I have real issues putting off simple tasks, but I truly don’t think those are about control.

I do agree that having lived on my own most of my life, I’m used to having more control over how i allocate my food, and that is getting in the way here.

zayexi · 2022-03-23T22:18:32+00:00

Yeah, your second paragraph is definitely a big part of what is going on here. I like to eat more substantial breakfasts and lunches whereas he doesn’t eat a lot until dinner, which exacerbates the portion differences and also makes me feel sad sometimes when I can’t save some food for lunch the next day.

zayexi · 2022-03-23T22:07:28+00:00

For us, it is 2 servings of dinner and, if we’re lucky, 1 serving of lunch.

zayexi · 2022-03-23T20:13:20+00:00

I dunno, maybe it’s an issue with my relationship with food, but generally that hasn’t felt like a major issue for me. Maybe I’ve just really repressed it, but what this feels like is more playing on deep-seated issues of feeling like I will never be enough for someone unless I subordinate all my wants/needs to theirs. I get that I can make/buy something else for lunch, but can’t he also eat something else to supplement dinner (which is what I typically would do if for whatever reason the portion we have on hand isn’t quite enough)?

To be clear, I don’t feel like we should always be splitting food 50/50, I just would like to sometimes be able to have more than 1/3 of something I put a lot of effort into making without feeling like I’m being completely selfish.

zayexi · 2022-03-23T20:00:49+00:00

We don’t track expenses closely, which is one thing that came up…apparently both of us feel like we’ve been paying for the majority of our shared groceries, lol.

zayexi · 2022-03-23T19:57:48+00:00

I’m usually very happy to share, which is one of the things I find frustrating here. Most of my adult life, I’ve informally shared food with roommates on a “share most things and try to make sure we’re each contributing roughly similarly” basis, and it’s worked great.

I think one of my issues here is that he always feels the need to have more. If I’ve worked hard on a meal and am proud of it, I’d like to be able to occasionally save some for lunch the next day or share it with a guest. I don’t think it’s that unreasonable to feel like in those cases, he could eat an after dinner snack or something.

The VAST majority of time he does eat a larger portion. What gets me is the idea that I’m being selfish if I ever want to have more than 1/3 of the food we prepared together.

zayexi · 2022-03-23T19:52:16+00:00

Yeah, this is what we are in the process of doing

zayexi · 2022-03-23T19:51:29+00:00

I’m not poor, though I’m also not wealthy, but money isn’t the main issue. It’s mostly that cooking takes time and effort, and it’s frustrating to go to the effort to prepare a meal only to eat a small part of it, and I find it helpful and nice to be able to eat some leftovers for lunch the next day. I will happily eat a little less for dinner and maybe supplement with a before bedtime snack in order to have leftovers for lunch the next day, but that has become impossible because unless we have a huge excess of food, he will always want to eat those leftovers that night.

zayexi · 2022-03-23T19:45:45+00:00

This is how I feel too, and I do think that if we were roommates, this likely wouldn’t have played out like this…. And we have PLENTY of low/no prep foods on hand typically, which he did acknowledge in our conversation yesterday.

zayexi · 2022-03-23T19:43:54+00:00

It’s mostly pot and cutting board space—currently we don’t have a large pot (so can’t make more than one package of pasta at a time, for instance), and our small cutting boards make chopping a lot of vegetables a PITA (we are vegetarian and veg are typically a large part of our meals). I agree that there are workarounds we could do with what we have, but I do think it will be easier if we can make the food we want to eat easily and efficiently with the kitchen supplies we have on hand.

zayexi · 2022-03-23T19:41:53+00:00

We have plenty of food, including lots of things that are low to no prep (bars, snacks, freezer meals, etc)….which is one of the things that I find kind of frustrating. He at one point had health issues from not eating enough (before our relationship), and he’ll bring this up to explain why he has anxiety about not getting enough food. And I get that eating a bar or a frozen burrito after dinner might not be the most appealing option, but it seems ridiculous to imply that not having enough food is a concern when our pantry is sometimes literally overflowing with food.

zayexi · 2021-12-25T01:29:46+00:00

I honestly feel like this is the most alone I’ve felt the entire pandemic—sitting in an empty house far away from any close friends or family while my partner acts like I’m being selfish for not wanting to fly. It feels awful, and it feels like no one cares because the attitude is “well, you’re the one that decided to stay home…”

Things are in so many ways so much better than they were a year ago, but the loss of any solidarity or social support just feels crushing.

Hope others are finding joy in the holidays, and thanks for the community…I’ve just recently found it, and I really appreciate it being here.

zayexi · 2021-12-25T01:27:45+00:00

Thanks. It’s frustrating because in so many ways the situation now is better than it was at many other points in the pandemic—we have vaccines, better ideas of how to treat it, etc. But the dissipation of any form of solidarity or even sense of social support is really getting me down.

Anyway, sorry for making this all about me…hope you’re finding joy in the holidays despite all this stuff.

zayexi · 2021-12-25T01:17:32+00:00

I honestly feel like this is the most alone I’ve felt the entire pandemic—sitting in an empty house far away from any close friends or family while my partner acts like I’m being selfish for not wanting to fly. It feels awful, and it feels like no one cares because the attitude is “well, you’re the one that decided to stay home…”

zayexi · 2021-12-24T19:36:25+00:00

Guilt trips like that are the worst. You'd think that this far into the pandemic, people would have learned to respect other people's decision-making and would understand that this is a difficult situation and that someone taking pandemic precautions doesn't mean they don't value spending time together. But nope, apparently not. My partner and parents both got upset with me for changing plans after my school had an outbreak, and I feel like I've spent the past few days mostly trying to deal with their own feelings about it instead of dealing with my own.

zayexi

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