Coffee Makes My Stomach Hurt, But Still I Drink It (2019)
Strong coffee in the morning makes my stomach hurt. I can feel the acid trickling down into the pit of my gut and it already wants out. But I need to stay awake. It is a give and take I battle with every morning. Like most truths in my life, they are give and take. The truth of what I think I look like and what the mirror tells me. The truth of the uncertainties that my future possesses and the comfort, I suppose, I have to take within the things I do not know. The truth of what I perceive my youth to be and what it actually is, was.
One day you will go back to a place you spent a lot of time as a child, and there will be a space between what it was and what it is now. And that strange space will shake you.
I grew up in a town where everybody knew everybody and their sister. It was full of white adults that raised white kids to become replicants of themselves. I never understood that until I became an adult. Perhaps raising a kid is a means to create a better version of yourself. Or maybe to give them a life of things you missed out on. Either way, these kids sucked. They carried themselves like their parents: well my Dad said this and therefore that is the only truth. The only thing worse than adults discussing politics is their children discussing politics. Me? I didn’t know much about politics except what I had heard from teachers. Trying to learn more about progressive politics versus conservative was a trek you would have to take on your own, because, as with most white towns in the midwest, mine was very conservative. I’m telling you things you probably already knew. But I lived it. I remember one day when two innately-popular hot kids of upper class families, got into it:
“Obama sucks.”
“No he doesn’t.”
“Yeah he does, he’s making us pay more taxes.”
“And what’s wrong with that?”
“That takes our money away from us.”
A world of two different truths combatting to be the ultimate truth. I watched these mini-parents argue until they stopped talking to each other at least until prom. I now realize there isn’t much of a difference between high school students and said adults. Politics are politics and when I say I’m right that is the truth and you’re wrong and you will never be as right as I am.
Beyond day-to-day classist politics in Middle America White Town, kids were subjected to sports or theater. The usual give and take of being a high school student. However, there were two kids that had the courage to do both; and because of that, they were destined for success. Baseball and theater? He is a prodigy! I will say I had a crush on him but that’s far over now and I’m over it. I swear I’m over it. Give and take. Give and take. The theater program raised money to get a fly: the ropes that enabled Peter Pan to fly across the stage. The football team was somehow given money to get an underground locker room that enabled the players to run out onto the field. The fans (parents) loved it. Give and take. I don’t think any of these football players went on to play professional. However some theater kids live in New York, New York. The city so nice they can hardly afford a studio apartment. Give and take.
I hated high school. I hated the politics and the cool kids and the weird kids. I hated the town I grew up in but I loved the bakery on Main Street that sold sugar cookies. Never have I had a better cookie. Not even now, thousands of miles away. One bite and I was like a crackhead; addicted, obsessed, always wondering when I’d get another one. Nostalgia is kind of like crack. It is addictive and sometimes, can push you to the point of tears. Thinking about the past is a cocktail: 1/3 truth, 1/3 maybe truth, and 1/3 filling in the gaps with fantasy. I don’t remember every detail so I try to only remember the good ones. When I think about my childhood I think about the days before my parents divorced. The house I grew up in. The friends I had on my cul-de-sac. The black labrador that I loved very much. I forget about life after the divorce and how it created a deepening existential crisis every year I’d get older. I forget that it wasn’t always everything I’d ever wanted.
Nostalgia feels good until it doesn’t. The memory of my mom owning a doughnut shop is cute and sweet. But the truth of the matter is that she is on her feet for so long, that the sweat from her foot rubbing against her clog infected her toe and now it needs to be removed. This is the truth. Though half the truth (just owning the doughnut shop) is much happier. I can tell you that my Dad stopped drinking. That is the truth. I won’t tell you that he is tense, anxious and overall tremendously unpleasant to be around now that he is one hundred percent sober of the time. This is the give and take in truth. Coffee makes my stomach hurt. It makes my brain hurt even more.
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