White Girl Problems

She was standing in line at the local coffeeshop when the thought struck. She was one in a line of about four people spending their lunch hour waiting with varying degrees of patience for the baristas to make their drinks. The wait, she thought, is how you knew it wasn’t a Starbucks. That and the laminated, handwritten notices around the counter. There's no signage that's actually handwritten at Starbucks, only signage that's meant to look like it. 

As she was thinking about Starbucks corporate and all the people who were, for better or worse, simply one small part of that great machine, she suddenly could not articulate to herself why she was at the coffeeshop.

It was a wholly metaphysical mystery. The most literal explanation for her location was: It was the lunch hour, and she’d wanted to get out of the office. She wanted a double latte, and maybe one of the deli sandwiches double wrapped with saran and wax paper. 

But as she waited, eyes glazed, she began to question the various minutia of her life that had brought her to this moment. She looked down at her shoes, and she wondered how her decision to wear these shoes, on this day, and even to buy them in the first place, fit with the other pieces of her life. 

She thought of the work she had to do when she got back to the office. She thought of the petty dramas occurring between her friends. It all felt far away, like the plot of a book she’d read or a movie she’d watched that she’d been engrossed in at the time, but now it seemed to have no bearing on who she was in this moment.

What would happen, she thought, if she didn’t return to work. If she didn’t return to her home. The cat, surely, wouldn’t notice so long as her roommate continued to feed him. How far would her second-hand car, with its 120,000-plus miles, get her? How long would her money (probably close to $10,000 spread between several savings and checking accounts) last her? Where could she go, and what could she do? Who could she be if she shed her current life like a cicada shell? Was it possible, she wondered, to shrug off 20-odd years of living and walk away unscathed?

The line advanced. She thought, bitterly, if this were happening to a man the story would be the next American classic. It would be the beginning of an epic coming-of-age tale, with some great moral about the nature of the human spirit. But because it was happening to her, it was simply melodrama. White girl problems, she thought, and felt a little like laughing and a little like crying. 

She plumbed the depths of her subconscious in search of the source of these feelings. Just minutes ago, she had been content, perhaps even pleased, with the life she’d created for herself. But then, she asked herself, could she really claim something as active as creation in regards to her life? The question and the ensuing answer washed over her like some sort of Arctic tsunami, leaving her extremities feeling numb. The brutal truth of it: When she imagined her life taking form, she saw herself less as an artist carefully painting a masterpiece, and more as a toddler scribbling with crayons on the wall. 

She recoiled from this revelation and looked up at the barista, who was awaiting her order. She looked for some sort of answer in this stranger's eyes, hoping her desperation was not apparent. The visible pieces of the barista’s identity—oversized sweater, chunky glasses, beanie and bright red lips—all fit together seamlessly, and she wondered if the other girl’s insides were as well-matched, or, if like hers, they sometimes felt like they had been forcibly mashed into each other. 

She ordered a double latte and a chicken salad sandwich. She sat down at a table by the window and took our her laptop. She pulled up Facebook and began reading comments on one of her friend’s (a college classmate she hadn’t spoken to since probably before graduation) statuses. She finished her sandwich as she checked her Twitter notifications (two new favorites on her latest tweet about the tribulations of the morning's commute) and she gave her LinkedIn a cursory glance as she downed the dregs of her lukewarm latte. She packed up and headed back to the office.