Vent | dad destroyed part of my plant collection and everyone around me is pretending its fine

[a_carbon_based_life]

I know from the title it seems like something small and petty to complain about but I started my plant collection as a way to feel more in control, to feel like I'm capable of taking care of things and deserving of taking up space in my own home and since I started it my dad's constantly been Sabotaging it. A year into me starting my collection he started trying to learn how to grow vegetables in case of the apocalypse (he's a prepper) and I warned him to stay away from the section where I kept my infested plants. 3 years later and I'm still fighting off the bugs he brought back inside and refused to keep off his own plants because in his own words "he doesn't care as his plants are sturdy and functional while mine are delicate and decorative". He's introduced several different types of pests to my plants despite me, my mom, and even my grandmother all warning him for months of what he was doing was going to ruin everything. He's ended up killing 20+ of my plants by continuously doing this. Earlier this year I went into a depressive episode due to being sa'd and loosing my 2 best friends and the ONLY thing i cared about and spent any energy doing was trying to start a garden for the spring. He kept rearranging my plants, bending them, breaking them, etc multiple times a day and would throw a fit when I would tell him to stop. A couple days later a bunch of crows pulled all the saplings out of the dirt and he sat and watched refusing to do anything because "I told him not to touch them anymore". I wasn't even showering at that point. It was the only thing I had to look forward to. Anyway I bring it up now because I've been too depressed to keep up the pest control regemine I have and it's been damaging some of my plants and he used that as an excuse to comepletley rearrange my plants, rearrange and take down some of the grow lights I have, " pruned" some of them without my permission (I found entire previously healthy Basil branches chopped off and left in the sink to rot. That Basil plant meant so much to me as I essentially brought it back from the dead and it gave me hope that maybe I could do the same with myself). Again I had a specific section for the sick plants and a specific section for the healthy ones and they've all been mixed. I'm so scared they're all going to get infected and die now. I still need to rearrange them but just looking at it makes me want to cry. I feel like this is so small compared to what a lot of people talk about on here but idk I needed to vent
I feel like I should clarify that I have been asking him to stop for years and I've been showing him how he hurts them for years and intentionally ignores it. I had a couple pots with bulbs in them sitting outside and told him repeatedly not to plants anything in there only for him to plant 3 tomatoes overtop and then blame me for "not labeling it clearer". There's no way he doesn't no what he's doing. I've asked him with help cleaning up his mess and he evades any conversation about it or consistently puts it off. And there was NO reason for him to cut apart my basil

 

[I Can't Say]

That sucks that he seems to be determined to antagonize you on this. I like to watch plant people care for their plants, so I get that they mean a lot to you. I hope you can find the energy to salvage what's still good.

 

[ThisUnrest]

Im so upset reading about how abusive your dad is being. I feel like he is psychologically torturing you. To repeatedly destroy the things you love and that help you feel better is just so mean. And he keeps acting like its an accident. I wish i could save all your plants. Im so sorry you have to deal with his selfish and immature bullshit. Youre very sweet for caring for your plants so much.

 

[UsagiDrop]

What he's doing to you and your plants is spiteful, mean-spirited and wrong. I'm really sorry that you have to go through something like that. I'm becoming a plant person, I don't have many plants but the ones that I do have mean a lot to me, I feel really responsible for them. Watching just one of them die made me freak out so I can't imagine how I would feel if someone was continually sabotaging my plants.

There's no need to compare your suffering to others. Even if people have other things to complain about, that doesn't take away from the distress that you're feeling. And to me, this isn't a small or silly things. It's a fact that caring for plants is beneficial to our mental health for a number of reasons. Plants are also living beings that we watch grow and thrive, we end up spending a lot of time with them and getting attached to them, so it's understandable to care and be saddened when they're sick or dying, especially at someone else's cruel hands.