We are all out of Coffee.
I informed my mom this. Now, everyone drinks coffee in our household. There is a fragile system at work here- people buy coffee, and I make it. I’m the first person to get up in the morning, and have no problem making coffee. I enjoy coffee in the morning.
However when I told my mom this, she says, tell G (G is my mom’s boyfriend who lives with us). This is where problems begin. See, instead of living in a more or less collective household like many families do, ours is hampered by differences in blood relation. Since my mother and I are not related to G and his son (who also lives with us) there is this invisible ‘barrier’ in the household it seems. That barrier seems to extend to groceries- G has been tired of going grocery shopping for the household because, gasp! the food gets eaten! However he is convinced I am the one gobbling up all the food. He feels he cannot secure his ‘half’ of the food for him and his son. Now as for me, I hardly ever eat at home, mostly because of the ruckus caused by eating ANYTHING in his field of vision. When faced with the decision of eating lunch at home or going out, I’ll usually go out if G is around because if he sees me eating something for lunch, 9 times out of 10 I get barked at for eating ‘the last of’ ‘the only’ ‘the food G’s son hasn’t gorged on yet’. I should mention also that G’s son is a super-athletic type and probably eats more than the rest of the household combined. Its like I’m getting yelled at because I’m not letting him eat all the food in the house. Now, my mom tries to make grocery shopping a democratic affair. She gets what everyone wants, and splits the grocery bill with G. Only G has been kinda flaky about paying her back. My mom has gotten pissed, and she’d rather have him go shopping and pay him her half. But he doesn’t get around to going grocery shopping as often. So in the situation I’m in (no coffee) I’m stuck making do without it until they go shopping.
Couldn’t I go grocery shopping myself and buy my own food? Certainly! But that would put me down a path of unwanted exploitation- the second I start buying my own food they will immediately stop sharing theirs . Food is probably the most heated topic in our household. Things like coffee, which everyone uses, can often be absent for up to a week before G finally gets sick of not having it himself and buys more.
An easy solution/answer to this problem is ‘move out’. But in my opinion, this is something really petty and stupid to get driven out of my own home about. And its not even my family, its my mom’s boyfriend. With most things, I get along fine, but for some reason food is the big conflict. I think it is because G must think his son isn’t getting enough food, so he has to make sure to get on everyone else’s case about eating such-and-such because his own son hasn’t had any yet.
If we could afford to live in our house without them, I would heavily advise my mother to kick him out. However, currently he is contributing financially, so for the time its more practical for everyone for things to remain the way they are. But ever since they moved in I really feel like he’s taken over :mad: