Lingering Connections

There is something about the scene in a coffee shop. Is it the potent smell of burnt espresso that lingers on your clothes long after you are gone, or the ever present collision of emotions flowing through the air? There’s a sense of calm amidst the coffee shop chaos that somehow provides an escape route to everyone that enters. A place anyone can go to escape, reflect, or dream. 

Observing the flow of people, I can’t help but wonder if this is how everyone felt at twenty—blissfully overwhelmed by their big aspirations, that at one point felt plausible. Did they all have big dreams that faced the wrath of society's dissent, or is it just me? As self-centered as it sounds, I fear that I am the only one to feel this strangled by society's barriers. Their opinions are engraved in me, pressing into my gut like a vine of thorns. Their walls are suffocating—tall and dark—ever so present from day to day. Yet, sitting in this small town coffee shop, I somehow feel them both dissipating and gaining strength. 

It’s humorous that not a soul in this coffee shop knows the treacherous decisions looping through my brain like a merry go round. None of them know about my young, rapturously ignorant self, who wholeheartedly believed that her Mumsie and Papsie would bear the brunt of her irresponsibility. Little did my seventeen year-old self know, that each day I shined my pearly whites to those lethal cameras, the wall was growing taller and taller right underneath my nose. Quickly learning that Mumsie and Papsie would no longer be my backbone, and I would be thrown on my ass, right smack in the middle of society's lens. But as I scan the crowd once more, it hits me—no one here knows that side of me. To all of them, I am an outsider, visiting their small town coffee shop, and they will never see or hear from me again. I imagine they find peace in that. 

Nestled quietly in the corner, nose deep into a book, a girl sips away at her coffee. She’s not typically a girl I would be compelled to stare at, but there is something magnetic about her. Possibly it’s her sleek black hair and worn out Doc Martens, or maybe it’s her ability to present herself with such content. At first glance, you’d think she’d already walked her yellow brick road and found the Great Oz we all have been yearning for. That’s how fulfilled she appeared. 

In my first year of university, I learned the ins and outs of childhood development. We are the products of the environment we grew up in. Subtly hinting that if you are as screwed up as I am, it’s your parents fault. Obviously, the coffee shop girl is not one of us. She clearly won the great prize. I figure she has a family that preaches the importance of unconditional love and showers her with an overwhelming amount of support. The type of family bond that feels untouchable, like a Hallmark movie.

In my family, our values fall short of Hallmark. Our mantra—to be a girl, is to be told who you are. Growing up, my family went on vacation almost every summer, typically to somewhere in the United States. When I was eight, we drove down to New Orleans—I remember vividly, the historical structure of the French Quarter, the insanely sticky heat, and the ever so present smell of urine that carried through the city. 

When we arrived, the locals warned my parents, “Hold onto that one tight. She is top-quality in their books!” instilling the fear that I could slip right through their fingers, and into their control at any given moment. At the time I didn’t understand what they meant, or who they were, and why I was top-quality in their books, but now that I am older, I finally understand why we didn’t go out at night on that vacation. This occurrence was not a one time thing: it was common throughout my childhood, adolescence, and even now. Something about my bright blue eyes, porcelain skin, and bleach blonde hair that fails to darken, places a target on my back. I was and always will be, desirable. For that, I will forever suffer from hyperawareness. She wouldn’t understand what it’s like to fear what lingers in the shadows. 

At gatherings, people would sit me down and lecture me on my future, insisting that,“you’re going to do extraordinary things”. Then, one of my elderly aunts quickly followed with,“beauty will get you far”. At what point did knowledge and qualifications fly out the window, and beauty become enough? Not only do I now feel the burning pressure to do remarkable things in life, but I have to sustain this radical beauty standard. And if I don’t, does that make all I accomplish, amount to nothing? I always wondered if they sincerely thought I was going to do great things in life, or if they just thought I was beautiful and presumed the two fell together. 

Now that I’m twenty, living on my own, and wanting to pursue my dreams of doing something life-changing, I see things through a different lens. As their phone calls spread further apart, I realized they were never eager for me to be the next Oprah Whinfrey or Louisa May Alcott, but rather the world’s next sweetheart—with a socially acceptable career for a woman. That is if you can call being a devoted housewife a career. 

Will I ever fulfill the exhaustive expectations they ask of me? Despite my constant endeavors to please them, my gut knows the hole I’m digging has no end destination. Yet, I continue to dig. 

My lungs begin to tighten. The elephant compressing my chest grows heavy as my mind wanders through the never ending what ifs. The majority of the fears rustling through my brain are ones I’ve seen before, but this one is new, and worth keeping me up at night—what if I never achieve happiness? 

  A homeless man stumbles in from off the street, belting at the baristas and I am abruptly shaken back to reality. Attempting to distract myself from spiraling into an existential crisis, I peer over to the businessman working beside me, analyzing his every movement. You can see he is disturbed by the commotion in the cafe, but insists on appearing professional. With his heels pressed firmly into the ground and his nose pointed up to the sky, he subtly adjusts his suit jacket. His mannerisms remind me of my great uncle. Just like the businessman, he would prance around the house with his chest held high and his suit creases pressed so sharp they could cut ice. He would glare into your eyes, hoping you would show an ounce of unease. Every once and a while his mask would crack and the layer beneath the stone would shine through. But all was lost the second someone walked in. The walls would rebuild themselves, and his image would be restored—the stone facade, an act we all knew far too well. 

My own coffee cup sits on the table, untouched now, a prop in this quiet act of observation. I glance at my reflection in the window beside him. Do we all put on a facade to mitigate our self loathing that brews from the fear of what may be perceived of us? The question churns uncomfortably in my gut. 

I look back at him and realize something nerve wracking: he’s noticed me watching. His pen stops mid-tap, and for the first time, his mask melts away. There’s a flicker of something behind his eyes—recognition, maybe? Or suspicion? Either way, it’s enough to make me look down and pretend to fidget with the tea bag in my London fog. 

“Something on your mind?” he says, his voice softer than I expected, floating through the cafe.

Caught off guard, I stumble over my words, “Oh uh. No, sorry.” 

For what felt like eternity, he stared at me as if he could read every word that was flowing through my mind. 

“Okay, then.” he said, folding his hand around his black coffee as he headed back into the work hole he’s carved for himself. The moment is over, but it lingers in the air, leaving a sense of unfinished business.

I shift in my seat, the weight of my own thoughts pulling me back into myself. For a moment I wonder if that flicker in his eyes meant anything at all, or if it was just a trick of my mind, a projection of my own self-doubt. Perhaps my eagerness to feel comfort amidst the melancholy skewed my perception. Maybe he hadn’t even noticed me watching—maybe he was just lost in his own world, as we all are sometimes…

The indie-folk music blares through the cafe speakers, floating Gregory Alan Isakov’s masterpiece, Time Will Tell, through the traffic. Although the shop is bursting with people, my eyes can’t help finding their way back to the mysterious girl. I feel myself gravitating towards her tranquility, hoping to get a taste. Despite the mayhem, she continues to be utterly engulfed in her world—without batting an eye. To be unphased, fully immersed into one’s life, is to be happy. Is that what happiness looks like or is that just what I hope to be like? I dream to be like that. 

Caught in my own haze of admiration, our eyes lock, snapping me out of my trance. At that moment, I realized I’ve been envying a woman who is no different from me. As I gaze into her hazel eyes, I finally notice the sorrow leaking from them, just as mine do—pain, hope, desire, envy, passion, all emotions she too lays next to in the twilight. Her face speaks invisible words I can read like a book. She too, is a literary masterpiece that has never been uncovered.

A part of me wants to reach out, to tell her I see her. That I understand the weight of carrying a narrative too raw and too real to share. But, as I spread my lips apart and prepare my spiel, every muscle in my body tenses up, paralyzing me from head to toe. Something inside me knows that my voice will crack under the gravity of my own unspoken truths. So instead, I offered her a small, awkward smile. It is all I can give in the moment—a subtle acknowledgment, a quiet understanding. Her face twitched in response, softening as it displayed the faintest smile, before turning back to her book. And just like that, the moment melted into time, and the walls we had let fall began to rebuild. 

In that fleeting moment, there was no need for words or explanations. We saw each other for who we really are, no assumptions or opinions, simply the truth behind the facade. Two women, tangled in the same story, standing face to face as if gazing into a mirror. 

For the first time, I found peace amidst the noise—a peace that existed not in the absence of agony, but in the birth of understanding. As our walls are built back up, I couldn’t help but see us for who we truly are: pawns in society's game, carefully calculating each move, confined to the boxes we have built for one another. I wanted to bathe in that moment of realization, letting it cleanse me of the person I was before I walked in. I wanted to rid myself of the behaviours that fed into my social disdain. But, life has a way of moving forward, no matter how tightly you cling to a fleeting moment. So I stayed there, in that tiny coffee shop, mesmerized by the complexity of it all.