An Open Letter to my Coffee Addiction:
My Dearest Coffee,
We seem to have hit a rough patch of late. Maybe it's spite. Maybe it's biological resistance. Maybe it's just that I'm getting old.
Don't know what I'm talking about? Well, coffee, let's take a walk down memory lane. You and I had a bit of a rough start. From my very first taste and all through high school, I thought you were absolutely disgusting. Coffee is bitter and flavorless and overall just empty. I never could stomach it. When I went to Starbucks, I drowned my cup so much, I might as well have been drinking coffee-flavored milk.
And then my first internship rolled around. I needed to be up by 7:00 AM if I wanted a decent day, but I was not exactly cognizant that early in the morning. And there it was -- the break room coffee pot, only 10¢ per cup. Plus, all the cool old people were doing it. I took the dive.
Eeeeeeeuuuuuuuuuuuuggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
Nope. Still disgusting. BUT, in my poor-college-student scrounging activities, I found something else - free bags of cocoa. If I mixed a small teaspoon in with the brown muck, I could actually make it tolerable.
And therein were the beginnings of my downfall.
When I got back to school, I managed to wean myself off the stuff a little, mostly going back to flavored drinks with a higher milkfat:coffee ratio than would really allow for tasting. But there was a problem to that - I suddenly needed the caffeine again, particularly when my schedule switched to mainly morning classes. I couldn't keep drinking straight mochas if I didn't want my pants' size to triple. So... I started taking it black.
Friends. Once you go black, you never go back.
Well. Ok, that's a lie - I usually take my coffee with just a taste of milk, but you get the point. Worse than that, I started being able to recognize when coffee did and didn't taste good. Instant coffee made my mouth twist and shrivel, and most break room coffee just tasted like swill. But, it ultimately didn't matter. I still needed it.
But about a year ago, we started encountering a serious problem. Palpitations. No, not like twitterpation. As in, I started getting caffeine shakes. I was familiar enough with the feeling - it happened every once in awhile in senior year when I bought triple-shot espresso on an empty stomach (yes, I recognize how utterly stupid that is. Desperate times call for desperate measures.) But soon, it was happening almost every time I had coffee.
At first, I thought it was an anxiety attack. My chest would flutter, and nothing would help calm me down. No, I thought to myself, definitely not anxiety. I can usually deep breathe my way out of that, and this has been happening way too often for that. And then I realized - it happened every morning I had more than one cup of coffee.
I backed off immediately. I kept it to a cup at most, and tried to sub out for black tea instead. And it kinda worked.
But friends - tea does not taste the same. No, no, no.
Then I switched to my new job. The coffee pot on the floor was only 25¢ per cup versus the outrageous 50¢ in Jersey, and I was out of my favorite tea blend. Well... what could it hurt?
Sweet mother of mercy, I was back in the game.
It was alright for awhile. But, as of late, the shakes have come back, and it's kind of a problem, now that I have to start speaking in front of an audience on a regular basis again. This whole stage-fright/caffeine tremors mixture is not going to work out for me, Coffee. What happened? Did I offend you with my fickleness? Were you jealous during my brief fling with Tea? I'm sorry, baby, I swear it didn't mean anything. Whatever it is, let's work this out, because, sweet, sweet Coffee - I need you.
Until the next.
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