@coeurcorazon9949

5 months ago

I remember being fifteen, laying in my bed late at night and staring up at my ceiling. I looked at the window and the light of my neighbor's own window was faintly visible through the blinds. Despair. A deep-rooted static inside of my chest and a heaviness on the outside making it hard to breathe. I remember knowing that this horrible feeling was not new. I knew that I had felt this way for many years. But why I remember that specific night is because I spoke out loud, aiming for a conversation with God. "This isn't normal, is it? I feel horrible and it isn't normal." The feeling of heavy numbness, the static in my chest, the nothingness that is me and what I feel, the terrible inferiority that hasn't left me for a second since I was very young. I've done many things to myself and my body. I've given up on getting better. I have never told anyone but people have found out. People notice how little you eat, people notice the scars on your body, people make light jokes on it. I think they want to start a conversation about it when they do. I see their uncomfortable eyes, their careful laughter. Even the gross old man who hits on me at my work notices it. "it's your eyes, they don't look happy. Are you happy?" I told him no, I have not been happy since I was extremely young. Just yesterday he told me, "I look at you and wonder 'is that little girl happy?'" I ignored him but his words stayed with me. They lingered. An old man that has made comments about my appearance for two years now has no value to me and I will never think nicely of him. . . but even a creepy old man can see my chronic despair? Now I wonder how deeply my friends see through me. Now I wonder why my parents have never said anything. Perhaps the same reason I have never told them anything. I am a barista, I have met a plethora of people and admired the existence of just as many. Some people will never leave my mind. Like the handsome, scholarly-looking, tall and slim gentleman with round glasses who sat down all alone to read The History of the English Middle Class with a leather satchel. He thanked me deeply for the cappuccino I gave him and praised me for its quality before leaving. I have never been so attracted to a stranger ever since. Or the two elderly ladies that had decaf coffee and sat down together to talk about deep things. I was wiping tables when I overheard their conversation. One had not spoken to her family in perhaps a year. She missed her brother who was in the hospital and did not know how to reach out to him because his children were ignoring her calls and texts, making it impossible for her to get into contact with him. The family that still loved her was busy and up north. She left the north to come down here for a better life but had been alone the entire time. She spoke sweetly about the big house and big yard she had before, which she had traded out for something I can only imagine to be empty and dull. My heart ached for her. I could feel her loneliness. And, of course, all of the nervous teenagers with dyed hair and heavy makeup and dark clothes that have tripped over their words while ordering before digging through their pockets for change. Not to forget the tired couples who eat in silence, the angry husbands and wives who argue bitterly with one another and speak with sharp tongues only to treat me with more kindness than they did their spouses their entire visit. And sometimes, with a quiet son or daughter that never looks me in the eye. I'd like to mention the parents that come full of love for their small children. The love they hold and the kindness they bring about them. Fathers that look at their baby daughters with pure love and are unable to stifle a huge grin while scrunching their noses. The mothers that hold their babies close and speak to them with nothing but softness and dulcet tones. The elderly couples that are still as in love as before and it shows through the way they look at each other while talking. I've hated my job before. The weird old men, both customers and co workers that have came and went. I have never felt pretty when the "compliments" come from men my fathers age or older. I've lashed out at a handful for calling me cute or beautiful or told me to smile more because it makes me look pretty. I've crumbled under the pressure of sour customers and felt dizzy after a stressful shift. But at the end of the day, coffee is the most popular drug on earth. All sorts of people come into the cafe. And some of those people have given me exponential hope for my young life. They act however they want because most people do not realize that the young barista looking back at you intently waiting for your order is a real, deep-feeling human being that notices how you are dressed, the tone of voice, your tired eyes, whether or not you say "please" and how you say it and the way you treat the people you are with, if any at all. When she wipes tables she can hear you and see you. She remembers if you come again and depending on how you were last time, she'll make sure to make your coffee very nicely and hope to see you well again. I love my job because it allows me to watch so many people. And human beings, simply by existing, can unscramble the permanent static I feel. I don't know how this turned into a rant about my job but I have lived in a void of exhaustion and melancholy since I was extremely young. I mean around ten years old because I refuse to believe I've been this way since I was seven, even though I think it stems from my homelife at the time of my early years. But even so, the thing that cures me most is human beings. To notice and watch and feel my heart warmed or broken by others that barely acknowledge my existence. Of course, this isn't really a cure. But it keeps me alive.

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