What To Do When You Find Yourself Crying In A Coffee Shop

(Retrieved from a pile of blog posts: 8/18/16)

Well, maybe "crying" is a little extreme. But frustrated, annoyed, "low key" (as we millennials like to say) crying is pretty accurate. These past 2 weeks (okay, maybe past 2 MONTHS), I feel like I have been running purely on adrenaline, spurts of nervous energy, and cups of mediocre black coffee in between. I came across a quote the other day that read, "We show off our houses and food and clothes; but not what's in our heads." And that quote? That quote gave me the prompt [insert: kick in the tush] to talk about where I am, and quite literally, right now. I am frustrated. I am keyed up. I (lowkey) want to punch a wall. All it took was powering on my laptop, that bless its agonizingly slow heart, is dying. All it took was opening Google Chrome and Spotify, you know, just to work on some things, find a scene read for my class, respond to emails...and that gosh-darn-awful "Close program and try again" window popping up. Since then, I've restarted my laptop 5 times. And for an hour now, this has been the sequence: Restart. Load. Enter password. Click Spotify. Click Chrome. "Close program and try again". Choice words. And repeat. If your laptop has never done something similar, then you're not a real person. But it's interesting; I've noticed a common theme - whenever one little problem sparks (like your laptop shoving it in your face that it's dying, for example), it seems that I dwell on the menagerie of other problems in my life.

Like the fact that I need to buy a car.

Or that my savings account really needs a boost.

Or that I need another job to assist me in saving for said car and savings account.

Or that my face broke out due to extreme levels of stress the past 2 weeks.

Or that 'So and so' really bothers me and "I still can't believe 'So and so' said X and did Y."

Or that I haven't practiced a good yoga flow in at least 2 weeks.

Or that my tongue hurts and there's now an ulcer from where I accidentally bit it earlier.

Or that I really wish that my inner thighs would slim down more, already.

Choice words.

And it all builds and builds and builds, until BOOM: You're a parallel of the proverb, "The straw that broke the camel's back." And that's when you may or may not find yourself, yes, "low key crying" in a coffee shop. So what do you do? 

You have a choice. Yes, you heard me - you have a choice. You can sit, dwell on how shitty you feel, and flirt with your inner bully; OR you can do this: You can put on your big girl panties. You can take a deep breath and realize that these feelings of shittiness; these feelings of doubt and anger and maybe even fear are temporary. They hold 0 power over you. You can acknowledge that these moments of feeling like your life is falling a part, and that there's this impending doom around the corner...are merely your mind's distorted illusion. That's not to say that things will magically be perfect and that you'll ride a Pegasus into Starbucks...but to remember that you're still breathing, which means that you're still living. You're in a universe that inhabits over 7 BILLION human beings, and dare I say, even BILLIONS of opportunities. You can be okay with the fact that it's okay to not have it all together. So your eyeliner isn't on point? Who cares. Didn't get the extra shot of caramel you requested? You'll still get through the day. Have another flat tire? Life is over. Just kidding - 100 miles from now, you'll forget that it even happened. Spotify makes your laptop crash? Life will go on. You can choose to surrender. And not to the Universe; because the Universe will ultimately gratify nothing. Yes - nothing. But rather, to the Creator of the Universe. 

Sometimes, I think we fail to recognize that we are not the owners of the chaotic happenings around us. I think that we assume we are bound to the earth; at the mercy of its sleepless, tiring nature. I think that we fail to recognize that in the midst of our everyday craze; our messed up, daunting world...there's a "God of wonders beyond our galaxy."

And when you find yourself crying in a coffee shop, remember...you have a choice.

Which will you choose?