How to dump an energy vampire
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What is an energy vampire and how can I recognize one?
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I think there's like a gnome stealing my jewelry. You better do some kind of trick. An ancestral ring, one gold hoop earring, a necklace with the Virgin Mary on it have all gone missing. I think you need to provide an offering. Yeah.
You need an offering to the borrowers, yeah. Yeah. Clearly they need some things. What do you think they like? I think you should, can I just say an idea? Please, yeah. Offer like a decoy tray of like other jewelry and like put it in an obvious place and so they can be attracted to that decoy jewelry.
What about those fake gold coins? Yeah, like chocolate coins?
I think they're trying to get your attention that they need some useful things, like get a Barbie car, get a little Barbie mansion, you know? They're telling you. What do you people want? They're taking your valued things because they need some things of value, I think is what's happening.
Are we waiting for something? No. Okay, we're just talking, but I feel like this is very actionable advice. Thank you. Thank you. This should be the bonus tip, actually. Okay. Well, hi. It's Mariel Cigarra. Welcome to another edition of Dear Life Kit, the series where you send us your questions and we try to dole out some helpful advice. We're actually trying something new today. All of the advice is going to come from us, the Life Kit team, with help from the collective wisdom in our archives. And as always for Dear Life Kit, reporter Andy Tagle is here. Hi, Andy. Hey, Mariel. And we've also got our digital editor, Malika Garib here. Hello. Let's get right into it with our first question. Andy, you want to read that one?
Okay. Dear Life Kit, this is going to sound super petty, and it kind of is, but I'm worried about losing my friends when my life is going better than theirs. One of my friend's parents is having health issues, another friend is struggling with bills, and another is caring for their grandparents.
Okay.
I've become scared to share things with them because my problems don't feel as big. And I've recently had some positive things happen in my career. We're all in our early 20s, and I know it's not abnormal for everyone to be on different paths and such, but I'm still worried about stoking resentment. What do I do?
Yeah. I mean, I get this and it's going to be very common in all of our lives that sometimes when you're up, other people are down and vice versa. Right. And also sometimes even within your own life, often parts of your life are up and parts of your life are down. Like I have had personal experience with when I got cancer, people, close friends of mine feeling like they shouldn't tell me certain things in their lives.
Yeah.
And actually, it wasn't even good stuff happening. It was bad stuff, but stuff that they thought didn't compare to having cancer at 34. So they were like, well, she's going through chemo, so I can't talk to her about my breakup. And I didn't feel that way at all. Like I was I remember saying to them. It's like pain Olympics and they're like – to show up for them when the good things happen and not hold it against them.
Well, I have a question about that, because, like, if you do go through a breakup and you see that all your friends are getting married or getting with people, yeah, I don't want to hear about the fact that you're getting married, right? Like, why is it in that situation that it's kind of normal to, like, not want to hear... oh gosh, they're getting married. But then, yeah, it's interesting that you're saying that when you were going through cancer and going through this horrible thing, that it was okay for you to hear about other breakups. Is it because the context was totally different?
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