u/coniferous-1

Just picked up my new Ioniq 5, and I've been looking forward to seeing what kind of charging speeds I can get out of it before winter hits.

So far, Tesla Superchargers have been pretty reliable, but I've been capped at around 150 kW. I figured I'd give Petro-Canada's 350 kW chargers a shot.

Last Monday, I took a road trip from Toronto to Ottawa and stopped at the Petro-Canada station in Napanee. Both 350 kW chargers were down. Oh well, no big deal. Tesla it is, I guess.

A week later, on my way back to Toronto, I stopped at Napanee again.

Still down. No ETA. No explanation.

Fine. I had enough range to make it to the 350 kW chargers in Cobourg.

Nope. Down too.

Kept going to Bowmanville, where there were only two shared 150 kW spots available. Ended up charging at around 65 kW for an hour.

So, across four charging attempts, I've had one success, and even that was at a fraction of the advertised speed.

I know Tesla is theoretically more expensive than Petro-Canada, but a 25% success rate is pretty abysmal. At this point, I'd gladly pay a premium just to know the charger will actually work when I get there.

As a new EV owner, is this something I should expect from non-Tesla charging networks in Canada? Is Petro-Canada particularly bad, or have I just had a spectacular run of bad luck?

Genuinely curious what other people's experiences have been.

2 months ago my grandfather died. I broke no contact with my mom to say "I'm sorry." She responded with a single word: "thank."

Not, "Hey, I'm glad to hear from you," or "How have you been?" She never really cared about any of that.

She then deadnamed me in the obituary. I'm not trans - I changed my last name intentionally. It still felt like being erased.

I cussed her out a week later and said, "Dude, you've met your dad like... twice. He's fundamentally against me existing. Your son reached out and this could have been a healing moment for us, but instead you totally wrote me off. Again. Just like you did when I cut you off initially." But with more "Screw you's" thrown in.

1.5 months ago, my sisters messaged me to tell me I was being cruel and cut me off. The character assassination that's been happening since I was 10 finally took hold. My mom could have said, "I'm sorry you're hurting. Do you want to get together and talk about it?" Instead, it felt like she held up her phone and said, "SEE?!"

Exactly one month ago my best friend died. Complications from Addison's disease. I ended up turning my birthday party into a wake.

He was big into BDSM and we had a standing joke - except it kind of wasn't a joke?- that if one of us died, the other would make sure our parents didn't find the stuff they wouldn't understand.

So I broke the coroner's seal and cleaned up his apartment.

He died sick and alone.

He was a brother to me.

Later I managed to get into his phone and found his final note. He put me in charge of his video games and leather gear.

Half a month ago I went through his things and found a portrait he drew of another one of my best friends.

That friend killed himself.

My best friend had hidden the portrait from me because he knew it would upset me.

That friend spent the pandemic making face shields and PPE for nurses with the three 3D printers he bought because he felt useless sitting at home while everyone else was struggling.

I'm not going to hurt myself. I'm not going to do anything stupid.

But the world feels like bullshit right now.

I want to put this anger somewhere useful. Somewhere it can make a difference. Instead I feel disenfranchised and exhausted and I don't know what to do with it.

The people who were supposed to care didn't.

The people who did care are gone.

Some of them.

And I'm incredibly grateful for the people I still have.

But fucking seriously, how much is goddamn enough?

The worst part is my Partners going though this and seeing and feeling it all too. It's like we all take turns having good days and bad days. He was his best friend too.

My best friend died a couple weeks ago. His name was "mynameispatches." Mine is Morgan.

The last time we got together, we ended up trying Stardew Valley multiplayer for the first time. We had both been long-term fans of the game.

All the typical farm-maintenance arguments came up. His stance was always, "Screw the mines! Get money now and ore later!" He wanted to make the farm look nice and feel lived in. I was firmly on the "make number bigger" train. We squabbled like an old married couple about what to prioritize next.

He had Addison's disease, and an adrenal crisis took him from us far too soon.

I'm mostly shouting into the void here, but I'm really glad I got to play this game with him.

If there's someone you love and you've both been talking about starting a farm together, do it. Play the game. Spend the time. We only get so much of it, and it's never enough.

My grandpa died last week. No love lost there, he was a MAGA republican and I'm a gay guy. I only met him once.

I decided to break no contact and give my mom condolences. I got a single word in response "thank".

Then I saw the obituary. they got my name wrong. I changed my last name years ago.

And I just… snapped.

Because it wasn’t really about the obituary. It was that same feeling I’ve had my entire life: all I ever wanted was to be acknowledged as a person, and somehow even that was too much.

I just sat there and stewed over how, yet again, all I ever wanted was an acknowledgement of my existence and humanity and they couldn't even do that. And I lost my shit. I sent my mom a message saying "How dare you, all I ever wanted was to be wanted!"

Now she's gone and turned my half-sisters (further) against me. They both sent me messages saying that they no longer want a relationship with me and that I'm a cruel person.

Did they ever:

• Go without glasses because she didn’t want to spend the money (or she just wanted my dad to pay)
• Get kicked out of the house over something like quitting choir
• Grow up with a narrative that they were “difficult,” even while doing everything “right”
• Watch as their siblings got treated like gold, while I was lucky to get new clothes.
• have to come out of the closet and then have your mom go "I don't care" (not, "I don't care that you're gay" but "I literally don't know why I would care about that")
• Experience struggle after struggle just to have antidepressants thrown at them and being told that "you're the problem"
• Feel like they were being used as a pawn in their parents’ conflict
• Have to take BOTH your parents to court to get the child support that SHOULD have gone to me while I was in college.
• Got ignored when I was gay bashed in college, or was with an abuser/rapist after.

They got a version of her that I didn’t.

And it hurts watching them defend that version of her like it’s the only one that exists. like my experience is just anger or cruelty instead of something that came from somewhere real.

I don’t even know what I’m looking for here. Maybe just to hear from people who’ve been in this position. where your siblings can’t (or won’t) see the parent you actually had.

I'm an idiot for sending her any message in the first place. Don't give the narcissist more ammo to use against you.