Don’t Talk To Me Before I’ve Had My Coffee And Processed My High School Trauma!
I can’t function without a cup of joe and years of therapy!
Good morning, everyone. Monday, right? Just a friendly warning to you all, don’t even try to talk to me before I’ve had my coffee and processed all my suppressed trauma from high school!
I tell you, I just need a good strong cup of the brown stuff before I’m good for anything. It’s a miracle that I even made it into the office. Wait, how did I get here? Haha, just kidding. I’m especially not good for anything before I’ve begun to work through the deep-seated anxiety I constantly struggle with because of the way the varsity lacrosse team brutalized me for years. I have no idea why team captain Bobby Petrovic took such delight out of pushing players to “practice” by hitting me with those lacrosse net things.
Right, it’s called a crosse. Whew, get this guy some java! And a therapist who doesn’t have even a passing resemblance to Bobby Petrovic!
Coffee’s a lifesaver, isn’t it? I swear, I’m a grump and a half without it. And I get even grumpier and filled with undirected rage when I think about how my English teacher sophomore year targeted me and humiliated me every day because of my undiagnosed dyslexia. What would make a grown woman do that to a child? Every day, she would make me stand in front of the class, all those eyes on me, knowing full well that I just couldn’t figure out why what came so easy to the rest of them was so difficult for me? And why did she always give me readings that would inevitably cause me to have to say “penis?” Why, Ms. Gillespie? Why?
Is that a new hazelnut creamer? Hot damn.
Sometimes, I can’t even wait till I get in the office to get a piping cup of hot joe. I swing by a Starbucks on the way to work, and order a venti for the commute. That’s 20 fluid ounces of waking this old beast up! No lie, I usually finish that entire thing before I even pull into the parking lot. Unlike my senior prom, which I never got to finish because it turned out that my date had only agreed to go with me on a dare.
Thanks a lot, Sally. I’ve never been in a serious relationship.
Whew, am I glad to get that cup of mud down. I feel fit as a fiddle, ready to start the day, and maybe even work through some of my crippling emotional wounds.
Now, what the hell do you want?
