Friday Things // 03.04.2022
The one at the coffee shop.
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Hey, hey.
I’m doing something today that I haven’t done in, well, years. Literally.
As I’m writing to you, I’m sitting outside one of my favorite coffee shops in the LA area, where I live. I’m outside, drinking a latte, typing away on my laptop. Earth shattering, I know!
This — the sitting at a coffee shop, the writing, the sipping in the sun, listening to music in my headphones all the while — used to be one of my favorite activities. It was something I did all the time. I mean, ALL THE TIME. If I had to list my favorite public spaces in the universe, coffee shop would be at the top.
For a few years, pre-pandemic, I also worked from home full-time, and that meant I called the Starbucks down the street from my apartment my office. I was there five days a week, and I guess that’s what originally put me in the habit… what helped me discover the immense joy in the small act of dropping into coffee shops, observing, seeing other people out and wondering what they were working on, what they were talking about. It was always about far more than the coffee. It was the feeling of community that coffee shops tend to lend you, and the opportunity to be amongst others, even when you’re alone.
But I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve sat at a coffee shop since March 2020. Hell, I don’t even need a whole hand. Two fingers, that’s it, and this is the only time I’ve really settled in, with my computer and playlists and snuggled up to the idea of feeling…… normal.
There’s a Taylor Swift song lyric that goes something like, “I’d like to be my old self again, but I’m still trying to find it.” (My fellow Swfities, I have no doubt you already know what song that’s from.) And woof, that’s it.
Regardless of what you may think of Taylor, that lyric has really encapsulated my life for the last couple of years. After the summer of 2020, I really didn’t recognize myself — for a long time. I’d look in the mirror and I knew it was me, but nothing in life made sense anymore. Nothing seemed right. The things (and people) I loved were gone, including the pillars that used to hold me up and had once been such key building blocks of my identity. My foundation. In time, I’ve come to feel more normal-ish, more like me, certainly, but never all the way. Never 100%.
If you were waiting for me to say that today’s that day, well babes, that’s not happening. 🙃 But! I do feel so much more like me today than I did last year, and that… well it’s a relief, to say the least. But I’m not sure that 100% is attainable again, or at least not the version of me that was humming along on March 4, 2020. Some of that person is gone I assume forever, replaced with a (hopefully) stronger, more resilient version. And also, a more tired version probably. More impatient at the injustices of the world, and more confident in her boundaries. Is that a better version, all in all? To be honest, I don’t know. What I do know, though, is there’s no going back. I almost shattered when my mom died, and again when running (aka the thing that had helped shape me into my adult self) got taken from me for good, and I’m sure in a million other smaller, barely noticeable ways, but I’m standing.
WE are standing.
Maybe you don’t feel stronger or better or like much of anything’s improved from two years ago. Maybe it seems like normal is impossible, with just one thing after another being pelted at us (this tweet sums it up for me). That’s okay, though — because I can tell you confidently that you have everything within you that you need to keep pushing forward. And I know that you’ll get there. You’ll have your own “am I back in the before times??” moment in a proverbial coffee shop. In time… I believe it. We can (continue to) do this — you can do this — because we are doing it.
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I hope you all have a wonderful weekend! If you are feeling gutted by the news in Ukraine and want to help the humanitarian effort in some way, here’s a couple nonprofit suggestions who are on the ground in country: World Central Kitchen and Global Empowerment Mission. I donated personally to both (and have in the past for other crises), and support the good they do.
Thanks for reading,
Joelle