A Little Bit Dramatic
When I began my career as a college student, maybe I was expecting my life to finally become one that I didn’t mind living. I knew that a mix of anxiety, depression, low self-esteem, and a lack of friends was making my days short, quick, and meaningless.
Days became blips in time where I focused on moving through the motions of tasks. Weeks were typically just things I could section off as they passed, to keep track of pointless things like relationships that came and went, or jobs I quickly quit and moved on from.
Maybe I felt bored with what my reality was at the time. I had a job at the Cracker Barrel across the street from my home during the summer before my Freshman year. I couldn’t drive myself there because of a lack of a driver’s license, so I bummed rides from my parents or an Uber Driver. I was mainly focused on who I believed I would become in the near future, so I decided to do what I often do: wait.
For my entire life, I’ve always had periods of time where I decide the best thing to do is to simply wait and prepare for whatever is coming next. These are usually the times when I’m the least like myself, a passenger in my own body. During these times, I hold on to the hope that what comes next will be exciting or fulfilling and that I will finally be content.
So I sat in the lobby of Cracker Barrel for half a Summer, handing out menus and silverware to rednecks. I used the idle time between rushes to daydream about what I’d be like in college, to pace around the store, and to clean dirty tables. But most notably, I starved.
Starving bound together the long, drawn-out, meaningless months into something tangible and real. It gave me something to look forward to, a smaller, prettier body, a thinner, more angular face, and elegant, slim fingers. It fueled my fantasies about being in college because in these fantasies, I would be perfectly thin and completely flawless.
To me, this was what “maintaining and waiting” was all about, letting time pass without yearning for joy in the present moment. It’s a necessary skill in order for self-improvement because during this time, when you’re waiting for things to get better, you can’t allow yourself to wake up every morning and be disappointed that they aren’t yet. You have to wait. Starving is ALL about waiting and hoping for something, maybe not even something better, just something different.
Starving was a pure white, clean, unstained sheet placed over the filth in my life. More importantly, it was one of the few things I could control. The adrenaline I got from skipping meals and replacing them with diet energy drinks made me a good worker at my job most days. Other days, when I felt like shit and had no energy left for working, it made me a bad one.
I’ll never forget when I erratically took two women to their table during a lunch rush and was whipping around tables and chairs so hard that I broke a salt shaker. The morning before my shift, I had guzzled down a Mega Can of the “Zero Ultra” white Monster Energy on an empty stomach. A rush came in during lunch, and I was the only hostess up front. I zoomed back and forth between my post and tables in what I now assume must have been a cartoonish display of anxiety-induced manic professionalism.
I immediately got on the ground to pick up the shards of glass, but while I was, I knew deep down that I was purposely trying to cause an accident so I could harm myself. This became more real to me while I was outside of myself, watching a wide-eyed woman squeeze broken pieces of salty glass between her fingers, hoping for a wound. The reality of being so deeply disturbed that I would attempt to harm myself in front of customers at my job made me break down crying right there. I could feel the weakness of my mind in that moment, and it scared me.
I got up from my hands and knees after the two women told me that it probably was a bad idea to aggressively pick up broken glass in fistfuls. If I remember correctly, I attempted to compose myself by walking to the front lobby to continue doing my job (dumb decision), and upon getting to the crowded lobby, I fully doubled down on crying. I broke out into a shaking, child-like sob in front of maybe 15-20 customers. To add to my humiliation, I then heard a pitiful ”Aweeee" from an older woman in the crowd.
Now that I had completely made a fool of myself and stripped myself of all dignity, I figured it might be time to slip into a bathroom or something for a few minutes. So I did slip into the bathroom for a few minutes and repeatedly hit myself in the face while questioning why I couldn’t be normal.
Honestly, that probably should’ve been my sign that I wasn’t ready for college.
