the first one- my coffee

Coffee. It was just a cup of coffee. It was her cup of coffee. It meant the world to her. It had brought her solace for as long as she could remember. Conversations around the dinner table would continue and linger for her and her family both immediate and extended over the warmth of the cup. Her father regularly asked her and still does to brew a pot, “Kate B,” he says, “some coffee sounds good.” And before she knows it she is going through the same motions she had since she was a child. One of her first chores she could remember. It always made her feel important making that cup of coffee for her father. He takes it black. She with milk and one to two sugars depending if it is her favorite brown variety. With her grandparents, essentially her parents, who helped raise her it was the same. The bonding over that cup. Comfort in those moments relieved each day as she takes a sip. The nostalgia. It started off simply and not full of any ill intentions. She loved the smell of it and as a young child pleaded probably somewhat unmercifully until, until they let her have some. Negotiation and badgering were always her strengths. She was a determined one. Now don’t think they were bad caregivers. They merely gave her a slight splash into a warm cup of milk. But true love was formed in that first drop. Her early introduction to coffee is part of the reason why she jokes she is so short with her 5’2 and ½ stature. That half must count. It does.

First thing in the morning. Every morning. If not, the headache. The dreadful headache. She would be lethargic without it; she can’t truly function without a cup. Then in the afternoon. Then while meeting friends. Then after dinner, the commonplace of the beginning. It turned into a four cup a day or more habit. The more part happened mostly in college when she would have to force herself to stay awake to write a paper too late again. She never started early on those papers. She learned her limit the one morning, when she had consumed more cups of coffee. She awoke in the early hours of daylight to find refuge in the bathroom finding her seat on the toilet. It is a fate that no one not a college senior or a women in her thirties would like to recount, it was the dreadful explosive diarrhea. She had reached her limit, her body unable to actually absorb the amount of her love, her caffeine in a cup, rejected it in the most painful way. Okay, throwing up while shitting might have topped it. This would be the end you might think. No like any good addict, she just slowed it down a bit. Rationalized it was only because of finals, it was only because she didn’t eat enough, it was only because _______ (you can fill in the blank). It didn’t matter she wasn’t ready to check herself into a rehab or start the 12 step program. She didn’t give up that coffee then.

That wasn’t her only low point, there were others. She actually stole coffee before. It sounds somewhat ridiculous I’m sure but in the bouts of economic disarray as a graduate student in one of the most expensive cities in the country, you start to lose sense of right and wrong when you need to eat but also feed the addiction. The first time she did it, it was by accident. As she walked through Columbia’s underground labyrinth of Teachers College’s cafeteria, she had forgotten to alert the attendant that she had coffee in her tumbler. Once she realized she could get with it, she could not resist saving a dollar plus a day that she could put towards something else, anything else. The irony of going to one of the best education schools in the country and succeeding academically but failing miserably at making it financially could only be comforted by the coffee, that free cup of coffee. Everyone else she went to school with had legacies and trust funds. It just didn’t seem fair. She eventually was able to balance and juggle three part time jobs to make it work. Then she started paying for her coffee again.

So it should have came to be no surprise when her doctor told her that she needed to stop. Stop. No way. “I can only reduce”, she said. “So Kate, have you ever thought your anxiety could be exacerbated by your coffee intake?” She stopped. It was as if someone had kicked her in the stomach and everything was moving in slow motion but there is nothing she could do. She wasn’t a drug addict or an alcoholic, it was just coffee. But it was her coffee. It made sense, the signs were all there. She had overdosed, stolen to get it, denied the problem, and rationalized her behavior. She was an addict. She had to do something so she went straight to the coffee shop right after.