She sits alone in Starbucks.
Starbucks.
For approximately five dollars, people around the world come to Starbucks, thriving on the idea that they can exist as individuals.
The aroma of coffee lingers around the countless characters that arrive at Starbucks daily. They sit on their Macs and iPads, reading The New York Times, chatting with friends, and cramming for tests in just a few hours. You can be alone with yourself, while people only a few feet away from you do the exact same thing.
These same people unknowingly flourish on bringing life into the coffee shop. In the dim lighting, Starbucks’ all around are covered in mostly blacks and browns, from the ceilings to the chairs to the light fixtures and beyond. Like a scene in a movie, the workers who are sprinkled in green and the consumers bring the aesthetic value.
Lifeless without the presence of people.
She sinks into a boxy leather chair by the window.
Tall Skinny Vanilla Latte
100 calories
There is something so inexplicably charming about that paper coffee cup on the table in front of her. This one drink serves as the bridge that connects her with everyone else, so distant yet so familiar, who are drinking their coffees.
Indulging in small sips of foam from the top of that latte, she feels content.
Another reality.
You don’t realize this, but she may have just been crying in her car twenty minutes ago listening to Mumford & Sons. She may have consumed a whole bottle of wine the night before too, and she probably didn’t stop there.
A girl with wide framed black Ray Bans and tired makeup sitting upon an expressionless face.
The girl who sits by the window
She’s uncomfortable with herself. She seeks validation from others. She seeks some sort of mutual understanding, to feel wanted. It always has to be so confusing.
It started somewhere in high school. A boy who seemed to understand her, who liked the same things she did, who took her by surprise. But it was all an act to attempt to steal something important. Her ‘innocent girl’ persona, her identity, was taken from her in those five weeks and she spent a year looking for herself again.
But instead, an entire year was wasted by thoughts consumed by him and what had happened between them. She eventually secured another relationship to heal the wounds left by her past.
How comforting it is to be in a stable relationship.
How sweet to be loved unconditionally.
When she felt strong enough to be on her own, she left this secure yet unfulfilling relationship… one year later. But certain feelings that were uneasily forgotten crept back and resurfaced.
This time, feelings for a woman.
Not only was she now back to an unwanted state of being, but began to question the truth in her sexuality.
Maybe it was due to a sudden sense of security.
Maybe it was admiration.
Maybe it was her fear of sex with men that added to this confusion.
Maybe it was the knowledge that she was understood fully and completely by another person, unlike ever before.
As feelings and hopes grew, so did the aching throb of reality.
A writer and her boss
There are limitations, constraints. And when those feelings are headed down a one-way street, they are anything but wanted.
She’s almost halfway through that latte now. As she looks up from her Macbook Air, placing her cup on the table, she glances to her left and spots the lady in red. She is wearing an oversized turtleneck sweater. She stands out to the girl, perhaps due to her distinct nose. She looks like a single mom consumed solely by her career. At first she appears like any other person in Starbucks, and she very well may be, but at second glance, she exuberates with beauty.
They have never seen each other before and they will probably never see each other again, but they know each other. Something is there. The woman sits at a table with her computer, calculator and piles of work. When she stops for a moment and pulls her head into her hands, an act of stress, exhaustion, the girl by the window sees herself. In an instant, she sees herself sitting there in that chair. It is in this one mundane moment, where the girl who sits alone in Starbucks no longer feels so lonely.
Those crashing thoughts like waves hitting rocks on a seashore halt for this moment.
She feels solace. Looking at the nameless faces of those surrounding her, she isn’t alone. The girl who sits in Starbucks puts her computer away and pulls out her notebook. Looking out at the sunshine beaming through the window upon her face on this cold winter day, she writes for a few minutes, because she does not want to forget this moment nor the lady in red that has empowered her. There’s something strangely sweet about The Smiths playing in the background and the sound of orders made by people who are these women, and you, and I.
The girl who sits alone in Starbucks, she could be sitting next to you.
