oat milk

There’s a cafe I used to go to near my old job. It went out of business almost exactly when I got a new job, which made me feel like maybe it was a figment of my imagination.

I used to go there and buy an oat milk latte that came in a BOWL. Shockingly enough, that wasn’t the most exciting thing about the establishment. It was there that my Creative Director told me I remind him of himself and I saw Aubrey Plaza eat half, HALF!!! an arugula salad. I get that neither of those things stand alone to create something monumental, but how else can you illustrate the holy mundane moments that you have at the cafe right next to your work? I could add that I ate lunch there with my ex boyfriend or that I laughed with my friend raven there a lot, but I think you get the point.

It was the sort of place that housed the breadth of who I was becoming before I became it. And you know what? I can’t believe no one will ever go there again. It is completely inaccessible. I can’t have one last latte in an uncomfortable wooden bench and feel the way it felt to wear purple eyeliner and have no clue that a global pandemic would exist. I can only access this moment. Isn’t it both so trapping and so freeing that all we can access is now? I constantly find myself wanting to access both the past and the future. I reminisce with old friends and call upon an older version of myself everyday to remind myself I’m ok.

The worst part is that I can’t remember the name of the cafe. In the same way that I can’t really remember what it felt like to be my mother’s daughter or run track. It’s weird to carry around little pieces of a life in your heart that no longer exist. I want to wrap it all up in a pretty bow and hope that because I’m still my mother’s daughter and run every morning, I am still 16. But the truth is that I am very much not. And I don’t think that’s okay with me. I can no longer be both me and her. Part of me died so that the current me could live. I had to be her so I could be me.