A Simple Act of Self-Preservation

Café-borne internal monologues.

Photo by Maddison Rowe.

I’ve escaped to the café down the road that replicates a homely, warm space so I don’t have to be confronted with people who care about me.

Sometimes being around those who care about us is so exhausting. It’s like having to take vitamins every morning. The pill becomes harder to swallow every time you do it until you just let yourself be iron deficient for one day so you don’t have to taste another dog food-smelling capsule.

I don’t want my friends to come round and cook me dinner or make me tea or shove me in the shower, but it’s necessary. Without them, I would lie in my bed and wither like that worm lady in that bizarre Spongebob episode where they sell chocolate door-to-door.

So I’ve escaped to the café down the road that actually doesn’t serve very good coffee at all, like, damn. The walls are littered with knick-knacks and framed pictures of people I’ll never meet and the chairs are comfortable and worn in the best way.

A duo of women sit at a table nestled beside the wall. Their body language is open and inviting, leaning into each other’s atmospheres with purpose and a closeness I haven’t seen in a while. Both of them are wearing rainbows: one on a shirt, another on some socks. In each other’s company they are empowered and boisterous. They look at each other like they share the wealth of the other’s world that no one else could ever touch. Their voices ring with notes of soft lilac and navy blue — rich and clear, a relieving levity found in vulnerable conversation and laughter.

My thoughts are foggy. Maybe it’s the SSRI’s making themselves a cushy new home in my prefrontal cortex, or maybe it’s the general existentialism that comes with being a Severely Anxious And Depressed Person. At times I really can’t tell what is at the crux of my moods. Am I feeling the delicious fresh horror of the climate crisis? Am I realising that I’m so terrified of vulnerability that the only time I feel comfortable sharing is when I’m making videos about mental health for Instagram? Or am I a post-Law student trying to figure out what to do with my degree instead of Law? All I know is that I want to escape to Bali or Byron Bay or somewhere synonymous with peace and never return.

“Ask the person who’s in control of your life what to do.”

Something, anything, needs to desperately change. There needs to be a shift. I need someone to tell me exactly what to do, because the existential crises I’m grappling with are somehow outside of the scope of my self-awareness. There is so much transformation waiting for me on the horizon. I can see prosperity and peace right in front of me but they’re an entire ocean away. Warped by radiant heat from the sun, effervescent, peachy, so close I can graze them with yearning fingertips. My dad said to me over the phone this morning: “ask the person who’s in control of your life what to do.” It hit me like a ton of bricks.

So I’m sitting in this café down the road, crises swirling around my mind, and a young man is sitting across from me and he’s got his headphones in, calmly eating an eggs Benedict. He methodically sips his orange juice through his striped paper straw from the tacky 50’s milkshake glass it’s served in. Part of me is so envious of his apparent calm demeanour. Whenever I’m alone in a café I struggle with what I think other people see when they look at me. Do they notice the bags under my eyes from 8 hours of fitful sleep? Do they see my septum ring nestled in my nose and immediately assume I’m a hipster who comes to Wellington-esque cafés like this to be a topic of conversation and marvel? Another part of me is happy I don’t wear green velour tracksuit pants because no one else on the planet could rock them like he is right now.

Wind is angrily whistling through infinitesimal gaps where the windowpane meets the joinery. A lean man with shaggy dark hair and skinny jeans sits down on the other side of the room and my heart rattles around my ribcage for a solid 3 seconds before I realise that, in fact, he’s not who I think he is. One time I went the whole day without saying his name. I thought the absence of his name darting across my tongue would somehow stop the thought of him. Conclusion after hypothesis was tested: that shit doesn’t work.

People keep asking me how I am. Which is, honestly, one of the hardest questions I’ve had to answer as of late. I don’t know. And if I had the answer then I’d be actively remedying whatever’s wrong. I do know that the level I am on the ‘okay-o-meter’ means that Byron Bay keeps screeching at the back of my head. So do the memories I have of the broken relationship I desperately want to rekindle. They make an inseparable pair. Usually the latter comes before the former, in succession of one another. Usually like this:

Memories: Hey, remember [redacted]? And how when they laugh, their eyebrows furrow a little?

Byron Bay: Hey, have you ever thought of coming back here so you definitely don’t run into [redacted] ever again and you can find another [redacted] to forget [redacted]?

Me: Fuck :)

I wiggle my toes in my shoes to remind myself I am still a living, breathing human and not a sack of obsessive thoughts and tense, quivering muscle. Time for a diaphragm breath. Sip of iced coffee. Fuck. I just remembered I got soy milk. I’ve been trying to cut down on soy yet I just drank half of an iced soy mocha like some moody-café-harbouring-septum-ring-wearing basic bitch.

I feel selfish for leaving the house to sit in a café when I could’ve taken out the compost, or cleaned my room, or called my friends and asked how they’re doing. I realise that what I’ve done — walking 30 seconds down the road to a safe haven so I can remember what it feels like to breathe — is an act of self-care. I’m not so far gone yet that I’ve forgotten that I deserve a base level of self-respect and kindness. So my chest loosens a little. My leg stops tapping nervously. Sometimes a simple act of self-preservation is all we’re capable of.