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Frustrating seemingly small situation really stressing me out

L

Likemathsbutnotnumbers..

Member
This is probably going to be a rant, because I know I just have to sort this but it's giving me so much stress that I have to spew it all onto the internet.

Over a month ago, a person who was originally going to be one of my next housemates invited me to her ifta dinner party, and it was really good. But at the end I'd been getting more awkward so of course ended up in one of those ridiculous You can take leftovers if you want, feel free to take leftovers(it was said so much I felt it was obligatory) situations at the end. So I ended up with a random bowl of leftover rice. I took it back, and since it wasn't even the rice I expected(plain instead of vegetable) I inevitably didn't eat it. You're not meant to reheat it much anyway so it was pretty useless. But then the friend basically didn't ask for it back while I felt bad over wasting it, then I moved house and assumed I'd be able to hand it to her when she moved into our house. Then I got really stressed while living with my dad because he is a hoarder, there was a tonne of stuff me and my brother ended up doing which basically made the house habitable, so once I left the bowl was still somewhere or other. Some of my own crockery went missing because other housemates took it as well. Anyway weeks after I moved house, the girl left our contract all of a sudden, and weeks after that I was back in my new house and she started asking for it back. Now it's just this thing constantly hanging over my head that I know I should have sorted out earlier but I just feel paralysed when I think of it. It's like one of those chores you leave too long, except I'm fine with them at the moment, but because I also feel guilty as a result it's really not happened. I only get reminders to bring back the bowl while I'm away somewhere anyway, and she left it until the month in which I've had a piano summer school, sorted out all the bills for the house, visited family friends and soon I'm going to see mum in Cyprus. By this point I'm either buying her a new bowl or getting it back from the old house where it seems to be(I couldn't tell at first because the only person I knew stayed gave me the unhelpful response of I don't have a clue, sorry), and then I hope never to hear from her again.

Maybe I'll leave facebook at some point cause this is so stressful and it's really starting to be a massive source of anxiety. And it's making me feel so guilty. I know in most peoples' eyes this is something I owe, but mostly I shouldn't have accepted that bowl of rice anyway. Who leaves a dinner party carrying a bowl of brown rice...
 
If you can afford it, buy another bowl and be done with the whole thing. I think it is strange that she cannot let go of you getting back the bowl and blowing off how difficult it wound up being for you because you don't control your environment at home.

And now you have an out: a funny story, if needed, about WHY you don't take people's dishes home. Ever. YOU HAVE A THING ABOUT IT. And if it is a funny story, everyone laughs and it's fine. This can actually work to your advantage!

And yes; I can certainly sympathize with the bizarre NT world where they say things they don't mean. Over and over. And when we try to figure out what they really mean, they suddenly get even weirder about it, and harder to figure out, and finally we just want to run away.

They constantly say things they don't mean; and yet we are the weird ones.
 
Thank you WereBear!!! Yep, in the future I am rejecting all supposed gifts from dinner parties. In the future it'll be a funny story about walking out of a dinner party with a bowl of brown rice. Don't think it happens to many people!
 
I had a similar situation with a friend, with whom I shared a house for awhile. My daughter who was then in high school was asked to bring a dish to an event, and asked to borrow a lovely apple shaped glass dish from my housemate. She was reluctant to lend it at first, but then insisted so my daughter carried the dish to the event. Being clumsy, she then managed to break the dish before returning it because she foolishly left in her backpack with heavy books. My housemate was very upset, went on about how that dish had been given to her by her mother, was a family treasure, on and on. IMO she shouldn't have lent the dish out. I found one very similar and purchased it for her, but she only grudgingly accepted it. i felt bad about it and guilty, too, for a very long time. I think that people should accept responsibility for their actions instead of blaming others for it.

In your case, the hostess of the event should have purchased some of those plastic containers that are meant to be used once and then thrown away, so that if she wants to press leftovers on people, she should provide containers that they can carry away guilt free. One of my in-laws does this around the holidays. She buys a ton of these things; they are very cheap and come in three sizes. And people can take leftover food home and eat the food then throw these things away or reuse them.
 
It's like an unpaid social convention debt. That bowl of brown rice that you really didn't even want! It's annoying and has happened to me more than once. It takes so much energy to consider such an insignificant thing, and although it's importance seems to matter to others, it's really just a bowl.

Recall a friend confessing to me months afterwards that her boyfriend had broken the dish she took home with her from my house, think it may have upset her when I said "What bowl?" as I'd forgotten about it. She'd tried to replace it but could not find anything like it, and seemed to have given it much more value than it had. Think she worried about it, but shouldn't have in my case. People become strange it seems to me about conventional stuff that can easily be replaced.
 
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