Spent a whole year nursing a pitcher plant into vibrant life. This pitcher really hated the climate, wanted to die, I had to put in so much daily work just to keep this plant alive - building rainwater collection systems (because it could take no other water without dying), creating low-quality soil (because an minerals would cause it to die) and building it some suspension and shading which would keep it well-lit (as darkness killed it) without being in the direct sun (which would kill it). Kept it alive all the way through its dormancy phase, tending to it every single day, keeping it perfectly watered, protected, pruned and fed, managing its water reserves through all weather, and finally it got to the point where it was so large that it needed repotting. It was thriving!
Crazy thing about it was how such a thing as caring for a plant that wanted to die had such an effect on me. Because it required such daily care and management I started getting into a routine. My sleep started returning back to a normal schedule, I started focusing on my own work and progress with an eagerness I had forgotten, even in my most exhausted, anxious or hopeless days wherein I questioned why I should bother waking up I knew I still had to just to keep that plant alive. It got me through the year! :P
Now going on holiday means leaving the plant to a carer, and every time I've left it to family or a friend to care for it, it's always emerged damaged or with much of it dying or with loads of water wasted, but I never minded since the plant is admittedly a difficult one to tend to. As long as it got through alive I considered it a success to be thankful for, and any imbalances caused I could reverse in time. This one was painful though. I left it in the care of someone who was an experienced gardener, I suppose the first warning sign was that we had a conflict of opinion on how the plant should be cared for. She said it was a tropical plant that needed more sunlight to grow pitchers, I said it was a temperate plant that was just in its dormancy phase and that direct sunlight would kill it. After multiple 2 weeks of her insisting that it was a tropical plant and that she had more years of gardening experience than I therefore she was right, she promised she would not put the plant in direct sunlight.
5 days into my holiday in Malaysia she tells me she got someone to move it into the outdoors under the direct gaze of the summer sun during a heatwave. After I got a fucking heart attack and was absolutely livid they did the exact opposite of what they promised she said the next day she'd send a photo to prove the plant was all right. When no photo was sent I knew something was wrong. Three days later she sends a video showing my plant was fine, I now know that video was by then at least a week old. Finally I got my plant back and the sheer scale of the damage is nearly irrecoverable. A single leaf is in a condition I could describe as acceptable, it's only slightly dehydrated and scarred, where the others are burnt or snail-eaten. One of the buds I suspect was cut off with shears in order to stop more shoots sprouting, but I can't prove it to be sure.
They got angry at me for being upset over what was <just a plant>. They won't tell me why they ignored me and put my plant in the sun either, but I suspect they took it as a matter of pride that they knew the plant better than I did and just had to prove it :/
Looking over it further I found where someone had cut off one of the leaves with scissors and of all things, I pulled out a weed to find that it was in fact a potato growing in the pot. I don't understand just how badly they fucked up my plant this much, or how they did it.
Honestly if my plant had been killed by accident I would be accepting of it, but this greenery which did much for me was offed for such stupid nothingness, all my effort wasted... I mean, I suppose I could try and see if revival is possible, and I'm gonna start growing the surprise potatoling in its own pot, but it still gets me down. It's like samsara