Chapter 7

I grew up in New York City. I grew up in the boroughs. MetroCards became collectibles. You were bound to find a pizzeria and a bodega on corners connecting city blocks. They weren’t just sidewalks. Blocks were communities or refuges. I lost one of the last subway tokens. Yes, I was alive during that time.

My personal trainer who I only met a couple of weeks ago asked what Long Island town I lived in. They take zip codes very seriously here. My zip code refers to one town, but if you cross the street in one direction, you’re in another town. I live on the fringes;  I am at the epicenter of three towns, but it has been decided that where I reside, my mailing zip, is simultaneously the demographic to which I belong.

“Oh, so you went to that high school. Do you know -“ my personal trainer trailed off before I cut him off.

“I grew up in the city. I didn’t go to high school here, which is nice because I can go to the gym or anywhere for that matter, and not run into anyone I may know,” I said.

“Do you like it there better,” he asked me as if to challenge me.

“I do like the city more,” I replied. I saw him twitch. “It’s more unsafe now than it was back then,” I said as an aside to remain diplomatic. I think I believed this to an extent as well. Everyday someone is being shoved onto the train tracks.

“My brother is a cop in Jackson Heights. He just handled a three-person murder. It’s really unsafe,” he replied.

We got back to our session. He was showing me a motion using the cable machine that targeted my obliques. I felt something. And then I felt nothing. It was only our second scheduled meeting together.

Ironically, that very morning - at 4 am- when me and my parents with whom I live are awake, three hooded men jumped out of a dark car, surrounded my mothers parked car directly in front of our house and stole the catalytic converter. They also smashed the driver’s side window. I heard my mother hurriedly say our address in hushed tones. I grew suspicious and stepped out of my bedroom when she told me to stay away from the landing. I tiptoed back into my room, darted to my window and spread apart two blinds, peeking through as I witnessed the crime take place. A scream escaped. My heart raced.

I felt unsafe. I already felt unsafe. I feel like the house I live in, a no longer new-build, sticks out like a sore thumb, attracting unwanted attention. It has curb appeal - its completely brick - a salmon pink with dark burgundy outlines.

And then today, about two weeks later, something else happened that made me feel unsafe. My car collided with another car in the parking lot of the market I go to daily. It’s the only place I felt safe driving to and from. It’s one straight shot - literally. We collided as we were both pulling out to leave. I was headed home.

It’s a lazy Saturday. I wasn’t in a rush as I had nowhere to go to. Hell, I didn’t even need to go to the market, but I had wanted an outing. I regret not being able to appease my appetite for stimulation with television, reading, or just being. I was just starting to get comfortable driving after another mishap happened about a year ago, when I had jumped the curb and accelerated head on into a metal dumpster.

All of a sudden, I feel incapable of driving. My mother reprimanded me and gave me the silent treatment. Even as an adult, those actions sting. After, I called my brother - a surgeon coming off of work - and vented. He suggested that I take driving lessons- that last of which I took when I wasn’t yet 20. I’m aging myself, again, but to be clear, I am 33 years old. It wasn’t the accident that prompted him to say this and instead was my constant desire to live in the city- a walkable place that I did not need a car to live in.

I’m stuck between a rock and a hard place. I’m unemployed and have zero capital to my name to be able to scout out a place to live in with intention. I’m tethered to my family, like I always am, unwilling to leave New York City for graduate school after I had already accepted a seat at Northwestern University in Illinois where my parents dished out money to make my new dorm room as comfortable as possible. I’m tethered to my culture- unmarried as it were, relegated to living with my kin. I constantly reframe all of this: I’m privileged to be growing old with my aging parents. I am living knowing that I am spending as much time as possible with them.

I feel safe with them, even at home where I fear trespassers, and even as a passenger with them in moving cars. Now, I feel like I can no longer go the mile and a half distance to my local market or make the one and half mile trip in the other direction to the cafe. The cafe, where I feel as though my fellow baristas have my back, makes me feel safe, too. But the major turnpike I have to merge into oncoming active traffic in order to get home from the cafe is hell. I feel unsafe again.

The world has revolted against me and others too, I suppose. Though my anorexia and litter of job rejections predated the pandemic, the economy, civic sense, and politick have been corrupted, imbalanced, and lacking ever since Covid. Inwardly, however, I’m starting to think that my brother was correct when he said I am afraid of adulthood.

I’m afraid of driving, of being driven, and of others driving. I’m afraid of commuting, of missing time out with my family. I’m afraid of intimacy. I’m afraid of car accident police reports and calling up auto insurance. I’m afraid that I don’t work enough hours at the cafe to qualify for health insurance. I’m afraid that I am relieved when I am scheduled for less hours so I won’t have to go in and confront my truth: that I hold degrees from prestigious institutions only to sweep the cafe lobbies, occasionally bathrooms, and constantly answer that I’m doing very well when asked how I am. For someone who started drinking coffee at the ripe age of eleven, growing up feels so burdensome that it pains me.

Chapter 6

“Foot on the brakes,” I tell myself silently as I make my way home from the cafe, afraid to drive after jumping the curb and slamming head-on into a metal dumpster about a month ago. I finish my shift at 6 pm on most days and now into November, almost my fourth month of working at the café, dusk falls earlier in the day making it dark by the time I head home. First things first: turn headlights on. Put into reverse to back out of the parking space with the foot hovering above the brake pedal. About 6 minutes or so later, I park into the driveway at home. The outside lights have automatically turned on according to the timer, enlightening the gargantuan-looking brick house on a block of otherwise modest abodes.

“Did your prince on white horse arrive?” My dad asked laughing before saying, “I’m just kidding.” Little did he know that the same gentleman I fancied addressed me by name and spoke to me for more than a minute, as I was about to enter my car. That was the last time I would see him before taking two weeks off from working at the café for my cousin’s wedding.

In those two weeks I felt like something was missing. I felt upset at not having shifts in which to catch a glimpse of whom I referred to now as my gentleman caller. But ever since taking off for the wedding, half of which was in Texas and the other half in New York, labor has been getting cut and my shifts upon return were far and few between, sometimes reduced to a single shift per week. I then contracted COVID during the wedding and could not return to the café as soon as I anticipated. I lost my smell and taste that lasted for some time after I caught the virus so that even when I returned to the café, I couldn’t smell the day’s hard work worth of coffee aroma on my person, or my clothes. I couldn’t smell the danishes and sandwiches being heated up in the oven.

I hardly ever saw my gentleman caller anymore, his schedule’s regularity in flux as much as mine was. It’s the last day of December and for the entirety of this month, I cannot for the life of me remember why or how I had been experiencing any FOMO – fear of missing out- by not working at the café. I became accustomed to not going in, to not seeing the young man for all of two minutes and with nothing going beyond a passing greeting.  

I now minded going into the café. I grew agitated when I didn’t see the gentleman caller during my shift. I hadn’t created a drink in over a month and was unenthused but also anxious to be assigned bar, making the drinks. I did not want to work customer support either, which included cleaning, taking out trash, and being at the beck and call of my colleagues. I also did not want to work the drive-thru because it meant repeating myself every few seconds, handling money, and also making people wait, anxiously trying to reduce the traffic that would build up should I move too slowly. The break from working reminded me of my past – of my Ivy League education, of having anorexia nervosa and all that that meant, including but not limited to not having a menstrual cycle in nine years and going into treatment weighing about 60 pounds. I was reminded of why this job is not what I was meant to do.

Less work at the café meant less income, but more angst to find a writing job and forge a career even if that meant by way of an internship and not a position. I felt my age and snapped out of my reverie, one in which I was no longer in my 30s, surrounded by a bunch of college-going and recently graduated baristas as it were, and one in which I would finally formally be approached by someone of the opposite sex.  

I was dressing up everyday, purchasing more, larger fitting clothes to fit this new bigger body of mine that feels as if it were growing by the day. I was once excited to go to work. After entrusting my mother with the knowledge that I looked forward to seeing a certain someone at work, she responded that perhaps my path to this job as a barista was not for naught. Just maybe the hard times were meant to be. Something better could be lurking around the corner.  Maybe he was meant for me. Since coming into the café again, however, her suggestion comes off as the desperation of a parent wanting her adult child to settle down in time for her to witness it.

Whenever “my prince” does come in, I inwardly advise myself to settle down. My breath no longer quickens and I steadily meet his gaze, or so I think I have because his sunglasses making it impossible to know for sure, and I either offer an audible greeting or lift my hand in a half-wave. The moment happens and passes, but it admittedly makes my entire day. Still, I didn’t want to be there. I didn’t want my day to be made by the off chance that I caught a glimpse of someone who I may or may not see. I wanted my day to be made knowing that I had a purpose, a steady income, and a career, not just a job. I no only want all of these things, but I need them. It has become readily apparent to my therapist who specializes in eating disorders – a luxury – and I, that I need these things in order for me to pursue any type of recovery.

Chapter 5

“Is that your car in the parking lot?” a couple asked me as I was helping to ring up their chai lattes and warmed up blueberry scone. “Yes,” I replied without thinking about what car they were referring to. I automatically assumed they would be talking about my spearmint blue exterior, café latte tan colored interior, FIAT 500 pop. “Wow, a Mercedes,” they said. “No, I own the FIAT,” I said pointing at my car, slightly embarrassed. “Oh, that car is so cute! We noticed it too. Wow, a Fiat,” they said with the same inflection of awe in their voice. “Are you in college?” they asked. I told them I had a master’s degree already and was 32 years old. I quickly followed up by saying I was a writer. The shock in their faces was unmistakable: The slightly parted lips and the dilated eyes. What was I doing in an apron behind the cashier, listing off the non-coffee drinks we offered? Thankfully, the conversation veered off into the car lane again. “Did you just get it?” they asked. I told them I had the car for 5 years. “Still in great condition,” they said with admiration. I had to resume heating up orders so I broke off the interaction the way I did with everyone- your order will be ready in a few minutes and will be at the end of the bar to your left.

What the couple didn’t know was that I just received my car back from the workshop after I jumped the curb and crashed into a metal garbage bin belonging to a little Long Island hamlet. My front right tire busted and fell flat, my right light signal was cracked and the car’s bumper was off. My car was in the shop for almost three weeks and I am still terrified of driving. What they didn’t know was that I had gotten into a number of fender benders before that, resulting in my father bearing the costs of the repairs instead of going through insurance so rates would not increase. What they also didn’t know is that the car fueled my anorexia nervosa. Every time I would sit in the front passenger seat, the sign on the dashboard signaling absence of a person would enlighten. My weight was so low that I was not detected as a human being for years until I was slapped with an involuntary clause to pursue treatment in 2019 and began to restore what is now over 50 pounds.

No one at the coffeehouse knows that I have anorexia nervosa. No one knows that I eat a string cheese for lunch before working. No one is aware that I am triggered every time my manager tells another employee that to lose weight one must go on an all-liquid diet and go to the gym. I am tempted to tell them, but am just waiting until the time comes when I have to. For now, I have just declined participating in coffee tastings by saying that I medically cannot drink them. Human resources mandate that they not pry, and my exhaustion at repeating my entire story forces me not to elaborate.

What some of them know is that I am mixed. I’m a half Puerto Rican, half Punjabi native New Yorker. I was born and raised in the boroughs, not Long Island. I never drove a day in my life before I moved out to the suburbs about six years ago. I brought my biracial heritage, the other thing that set me a part, the other part of my identity beside the academic anorexic. I don’t look particularly mixed. Sure, I have non-uniform curly hair and eyes that turn slightly hazel every so often that is impossible to tell by my high prescriptive lens glasses, but otherwise I seem to look a good deal Punjabi.

“Are you Punjabi?” a young girl stepped away from the huddle of her high school brethren. I can tell by your necklace, she said. She was staring at my collar-bone length nameplate necklace that had my name written in the Punjabi script. I was taken off guard. It was the first time a customer had started to make conversation with me. “Yes,” I answered without thinking. I always state my full biracial identity but had failed to do so just then. I vowed to never let that happen again. I vowed to shed my hardened exterior without knowing how or if it could happen by sheer force of will.

“Are you Punjabi?” This time a young man asked me. He was tall and of an athletic build. How did he manage to eat a cheese danish so off-the-cuff? Did he thinking about eating the way I did? Did anyone who did not have an eating disorder think about food the way I did?

I recognized him from when I worked the drive-thru. He always ordered a food item in addition to a drink. He was always polite and flashed a smile that could make someone experiencing the worst day feel seen and heard. He drove a silver-grey car that looked like one of those Transformers model cars my brother used to play with growing up. It was always shiny and chic. I learned his name because we were told to ask for customers’ names as a means of forging connection. I could identify him in all these ways except for his eyes, which till this day, I still haven’t seen because he insists on wearing the shiniest of sunglasses, the lens of which one can only see their own reflection.

“Yes.” I paused before quickly saying, “I’m half Punjabi.”

“I can tell by your necklace,” he said. He was talking about the Sikh religious amulet I wore, a faith that originated in the state of Punjab. “I’m Punjabi too,” he said, smiling. I didn’t respond. I felt my stomach churn. I felt myself suddenly become warm despite always being cold. My legs felt like mush and I was falling. I was falling for him, until I caught myself and said, “your order will be ready soon.” I regretted it. Where was the vibrancy? Why didn’t I introduce myself? Did I lose my shot? How old is he anyway? I’m 32. He could very well be a decade younger than me. 

I’ve had crushes before. My last crush was older than me by four or five years, which was exactly what I wanted, basing what love was off of my parents who are five years apart. The problem was that he was of a nationality and faith at odds with my own. That is to say, our backgrounds made us mortal enemies according to history so my “love,” if that’s what it could be called, was forbidden. That and he already had a girlfriend. The whole scenario was unfortunate. We were all classmates in graduate school. He, his girlfriend and I all sat side by side in a lecture on the business of journalism because we were seated in alphabetical order according to our last name. I had not seen him since I graduated from journalism school seven years ago. I had not seen him since the anorexia took its toll on me physically.

I didn’t know that I was capable of crushing again now that my hormones are nonexistent. I not so secretly enjoyed the feeling of being flush, of feeling my always cold body go warm. I suddenly began to look forward to going to the café for my shift, just so I could see the tall, handsome man with whom I shared a heritage. A couple of shifts passed since he spoke to me. We hadn’t spoken to each other again ever since. I made a promise to myself to ask him something, anything just so I could restart a conversation. I wanted to take the initiative, even if this meant absolutely nothing more than me, a barista, serving him, a customer. This seemed to be the case with every passing shift that I just handed him his food or drink. “Thank you,” he would say before going on his way.

Chapter 4

My phone buzzed. “Can someone take me shift from 11 AM to 4:15 PM on Wednesday?” The svelte barista with the heavily lined eyes underneath her perfect bangs asked in the group chat made up of all the baristas working at our Long Island town branch. I had off that Wednesday, but the timing fell in line with the hours I usually work, between noon and six in the evening. As much as I mourn working there, counting down the minutes until my shift is over as soon as I arrive, working there meant less time consumed by thoughts of my body and how I really should be moving it, exercising. It also meant banking more money, and taking a slight pleasure at seeing a newfound financial independence. Just as I was about to tell her that yes, I could cover her for that shift, it dawned on me that I was planning on quitting any day. I was just waiting for the paid internship opportunity that I had applied for to come through.

I must have gone on hundreds of interviews for entry-level editorial positions at both traditional print and digital publications, including TIME Magazine, The New Yorker, Fortune Magazine, Marie Claire Magazine, and People Magazine. I applied to a paid internship that was writing centric. It was located on Liberty Street in Manhattan and the location could not be more apt for how I was to soon feel – liberated. I straightened my hair two separate times, before 7 AM. I took notes, rehearsed, memorized and researched. I went through two separate interviews and a writing exam that I handed in, confidently, practicing the method of being positive to attract positive energy. I thought I had the position, no questions asked, and for once was expecting an offer. My father and I were already conspiring for me to finally gain independence and freedom from the eating disorder’s grip not only over me, but over the minds of everyone in my household who were wary about me even taking a walk or lifting a grocery bag. We were planning on rentals in the city so I wouldn’t have to travel. We were confident. We were expectant.

I figured I could take her shift anyway because the offer had not come just yet and even if it did, the job certainly wouldn’t start the next day. I took her shift. And immediately after, I was notified by email that I did not get the position as a paid intern. “Best of luck in your search,” they wished me. They didn’t know that my search has been 7 years long. It has been 7 years since I graduated from journalism school. I had no control over my career stagnancy. First I inhaled deeply and then I let out an audible yelp, something stronger than a whimper, before tears streaked my face and I was sobbing in the passenger side of my father’s car, on my way home from work at the café. I was devastated.

Chapter 3

One of the better things about working as a barista is the apron that keeps hidden my figure and paper bag pants – the type with an elastic waist such that the fabric balloons from underneath for a baggier fit. Furthermore, the apron is in my favorite color: forest green. This apron, however, reflects subservience. At the drive-thru a woman was exchanging payment for a shaken espresso when I couldn’t help but notice the lanyard around her neck in my favorite color – that hunter verdant green. In blocked white letters was written, “IVY LEAGUE SCHOOL…” I asked her what it was all about. What was the context of her claiming to represent one of the 8 preeminent institutions, two of which I had attended. She looked annoyed and in a demeanor that seemed to talk down to me said that she was a teacher at a private school that yielded graduates who were admitted to Ivy League schools. I nonchalantly told her I was an Ivy League degree holder, hence my curiosity, to which she expressed surprise before driving off.

College was not the topic of choice among my fellow colleagues who seemed to spend more time working at the coffeehouse than partaking in mentally stimulating scholarly pursuits. I oftentimes found myself wondering when they found time to study. On the flip side, I saw the customers that flocked the café space studying with an extreme focus that only seemed to strengthen with every sip of their beverage of choice. They had laptops, headphones, smart phones, and a few had abandoned their generational Z technology for a pen and paper. I pined longingly to be one of those customers – to be in high school once more. To have hope and years left to learn and experience, years not confined within societal constructs for age. As many years as it has been post-grad, I knew I had those educational experiences, and no one could take that away from me.

I never anticipated on letting my colleagues in on my curriculum vitae, but felt compelled to set myself a part the best way I knew how – my degrees. So one day, I asked the young woman who I saw sporting a collegiate shirt from the same state of my undergraduate alma mater, Pennsylvania, if she attended that school. She confirmed that she had and asked me where I went to school. I answered matter-of-factly. There was a pause just then. I had a feeling we were mutually wondering what the other person was doing working as a barista instead of pursuing a job that utilizes our educational degrees. We couldn’t converse further. Someone was ordering a blended ice or steamed milk drink just then. We were saved by the bell that rung on our headsets; It cued us when someone had just made an order.

In another instance, one of the baristas, a high school senior, had alerted all the other baristas over headset. “To all of you who went to college,” she prefaced, “how many schools did you apply to and where?” During the shift when my face rests in a grimace and my soul feels deadened, I immediately felt a spark in me and I answered, “one school.” I was the only one who answered one. The college applicant replied that she was being forced to apply to upwards of twenty schools. She asked me where I had applied to, to which I responded, reluctantly. I did not want further questions prying into how I ended up working as a barista. Instead, she just expressed awe and said that I was special. I cowered back into my corner at the drive-thru window, where I was planted for the hour. I felt her gaze fall on me for the rest of my shift and I felt especially self-conscious.

The question for why I was working there eventually came up by yet another barista, eight years my junior, already with three kids of her own, I found out in a roundabout manner. She couldn’t believe I was 32 years old and had my master’s degree already. “So this cannot be your main job, right? I wouldn’t work here if I had my…” she trailed off when I responded that no, this wasn’t my main job. I’m a writer, recently unpublished, and searching for a job, waiting on a paid internship opportunity to pull through for me. What she didn’t know was that this was my only job. I had my stash of index card listing recipes for drinks and notes on the barista craft in my apron pocket. I studied the artistry of being a barista instead of honing my craft of writing. I had given up on pitching, having my pitches never replied to and sometimes rejected only to find that the outlet which had rejected them soon published a story alarmingly similar to the idea I had sent over.

As summer made way for unofficial start of fall, the start of the academic school year, and then the true autumnal equinox, it dawned on me that the café would buzz around 2 pm, around the time of school dismissal. Throngs of kids from a mix of private schools, as evidenced by their plaid uniform, and public schools, made their way inside. They came in groups. Some were cheerleaders and without a backpack in sight. Others had backpacks that remained unopened. They weren’t studying, and instead hanging out. They were detoxing with coffee drinks and again I found myself longing to be one of them, part of their groups, mentally unloading off school and recharging before reloading myself with a barrage of knowledge for an upcoming exam.

The truth was, I never hung out in high school. Instead, I stayed after school for whatever extracurricular I had planned for the day, or came home to attend a Girl Scout meeting, a piano lesson, or a dance rehearsal. My unloading would be when I finally dropped my backpack, or rather, the trending tote bag at home, sitting with my mother and watching a rerun of Gilmore Girls. My recharging would be eating a snack, either hummus and some accoutrements to dip into it, two 100-calorie snack packs that were so popular at the turn of the century, butter crackers and strawberry jam, or a chocolate chip cookie or brownie that my mother made from the boxed mixes.

I subsisted off of breakfast only during high school. I wouldn’t eat throughout the day. Back then my breakfasts consisted of either a packaged confection like marshmallow pie, coffee cake, cupcake, fudge round, or the discontinued package of hard-as-a-rock coconut cookies, a chocolate, blueberry, or glazed donut from the local franchise, or a toasted bagel slathered in butter from the corner deli at the bus stand. Throughout the day I would participate in physical education activities that included running track, and performing aerobic and abdominal exercises. I would walk up countless flights of stairs in my high school that was built up, like all the other New York City schools that had to account for lack of space. I toted around pounds of textbooks, binders, notebooks, calculator, and writing equipment on my person at all times. The amount of energy I expended throughout the day was somehow sustained by my early morning meal.

Upon walking home from the bus stop, I would smell the strong aromas of food wafting from my house. My mother would be home from her job by then and know to cook for her daughter with a seemingly voracious appetite. I ate seconds and thirds if my first serving wasn’t large enough. I sometimes finished the majority of food before my dad arrived and sat down to dinner. I did not compare the quantity I ate to that of anyone else and found my appetite completely warranted. I thought that I had deserved the fruits of my labor, namely, starvation throughout the day. Sometimes I ate so much that I would unintentionally vomit, but I would fight tooth and nail to keep the contents down. My main method of doing so was by walking. My dad would escort me around the block in the evening until the nausea subsided. He knew, even back then, that I did not eat during the day. He knew my stomach couldn’t handle the influx of food. He knew his daughter was too competitive for her own good.

In my freshman year of college, I lost enough weight to lose my period and was told by my then pediatrician that if I kept losing weight, I would have to undergo treatment for anorexia and leave school. I made everyone believe that I had lost my appetite due to homesickness. My father reasoned that perhaps being active and running on the treadmill would cause me to be hungry. I tried it, believing this to be true as well. It didn’t work. In fact, I believe it stressed my body even more so. I still wasn’t eating and the extra activity only depleted whatever energy stores I had left. The next time I went to the campus gym was my senior year. I saw an acquaintance that I admittedly felt threatened by, running effortlessly on the treadmill, her naturally silky straight tresses pulled back into a neat ponytail that nonchalantly swung from side to side with every stride she took. I started running alongside her, all the while feeling fatigued and unable to go on, but I had vowed to keep running so long as she stayed on the treadmill. I ended up stepping off immediately after she had gone from my sight. The competitiveness cost me weeks of dancing before my dance team’s annual recital. I ended up spraining my foot while running.

I never cared for running. I remember my first experience formally running and not just playing TAG. I attended a high school known for its rigorous physical education program. We had to run track-and-field. Sometimes a mile, sometimes more than two, and always timed. The first time, I was winded. I remember coming home and crying while lying down on my mother’s lap, my knees still throbbing.

Years later, one morning, before dawn, I heard “basement door open,” chirped by the house security alarm detector. My father had gone down to the basement, our makeshift gym, and was lifting heavy weights and riding the stationary bike. Off and on he would go. The rhythmic panting and weights hitting the ground were so audible that it pulsated in my ear. I was in bed. I weighed 65 pounds. I resented that he had the will, the energy, the ability, and the permission to exercise. I shot out of bed and began running on the second floor of the house so he wouldn’t hear me. I lost my footing and fell face first onto the landing before the stairs. My nose shattered and a pool of blood surrounded me. He heard the loud thud and ran up the stairs to find me. Again, I was reminded why I never enjoyed running.

My therapist believes that I am currently in competition with my mother and maybe even my father. My father believes so as well. I’m less certain. It’s not a matter of who is eating less or more or who is moving is less or more. Instead, it’s the premise for my mother choosing to engage in formal forms of movement, like walking on a treadmill or performing crunches on a yoga mat. It’s my mother choosing to purchase a treadmill whilst I was suffering physically from anorexia due to my excessive walking and starvation that has me resenting her – resentment that is confused for competition. This scenario played out when I saw those high school students enter the café in the late afternoon after they had been dismissed. I resented them. I wanted to be them not because I was vying for attention or particularly wanted to go through the gamut of studying for exams and proving myself once more. Both my mother and those kids have something in common: a purpose. They both have a way to preoccupy their time. They are both goal-oriented with actual, attainable goals that they have control over.

Chapter 2

I know me enough to know that when my manager said something off-the-cuff, the statement would continue to stick with me. I was now into my fourth week working as a barista and I was assigned to what would become my most triggering, yes, but most favorite position – “warming” – placing baked goods and café sandwiches in the oven. When there were no orders in the queue, I busied myself with restocking the food cart and fridge beneath the oven with items from the back stock. I would walk all of a yard through the swinging doors to the backroom, carrying in my hands as much as I could carry before making another inevitable trip. “You could just roll the entire cart out instead of carrying them, “ my manager said before adding, “unless of course you’re trying to get more steps in.” The thought had not occurred to me. But at that moment, it seared my soul. I knew that I was not intentionally doing enough to get my steps in, alluding to the belief that 10,000 steps a day is equivalent to eating an apple, and as the saying goes, keeping a doctor away. I didn’t own a fitness tracker wristband like so many did.

The simple act of a walk jogged too many memories of me almost collapsing. Too many memories of hours spent on foot, intentionally and checking the phone’s health app only to see that I had clocked at least 17,000 steps. Born in New York City and raised in the humble borough of Queens, walking was my primary means of transportation. I walked with ease to a department store geographically situated in Long Island. I walked to the pizzeria on the corner, the pharmacy a few blocks down, and the post office not far after it. I walked to temple and the bus stop that would ferry me further into the heart of Queens where I attended school. Growing up in the boroughs meant attending not the school that was closest, and instead going to the one you were academically admitted to, which could be miles and a small body of water away.

I never thought about the concept of steps or the Generation Z-bestowed “hot girl walk,” which transformed a form of mobility for leisure and practical function into a workout. I never believed that my own mother would consider walking from my car and into a grocery store, a form of valid formal movement equivalent to exercise. I never believed that I would even own a car until I moved to Long Island and it was all but mandated. A trip to the supermarket would make a 5-minute car ride an almost hour-long walk. Walking had become taboo in my household because it was the primary means by which I lost 10 pounds, then 20, 30, 40, and 50 before my body began shutting down.

Certainly, walking was not the sole form of my rapid deterioration. I had also stopped eating. I wrote a list of foods to eliminate from my diet that I would add to daily until I no longer needed the list. It was no longer cutting out my favorite foods that largely were made up of the Puerto Rican and Punjabi delicacies from my parents’ heritages. It was I cutting out most everything. Furthermore, my restricting food predated the list’s conception, which occurred in graduate school. Not eating and walking were my two primary forms of coping with stressful situations, I would later learn.  

When I was 16 years old, I was admitted to Harvard University’s summer school for high school students who could enroll in college courses for credit. I still remember opening my email on a Compaq computer. My face was an inch away from the screen so that the letters seemed to quiver. It read:

“Dear Ms. Reshmi Oberoi:

Congratulations! I am pleased to inform you that you have been admitted to the Harvard Summer School Secondary School Program.” The letters started to dance, no doubt due to the tears that welled up. I was shaking. I was gushing. I was Rory Gilmore and well on my way to making an Ivy League degree a real possibility. With my parents’ modest educational backgrounds, this admittance seemed to be the pinnacle of success. My first day there, I was welcomed with a denim cap emblazoned with “Harvard” and a sweatshirt blanket embroidered with the university’s emblematic crest. The hospitality did nothing to quell my anxiety at staying with roommates who seemed a good deal worldlier than I. My heart sunk into the pit of my stomach upon my parent’s departure. I was homesick at sixteen, and it was my first taste of not freedom, but instead, imprisonment in my body and mind. I was depressed. I cried everyday from morning till evening but refused to leave the ivy covered iron wrought gates of the Ivy League. So I busied myself instead. I busied myself so much so that I stopped eating. My Limited Too brand khaki pants that had once fit snugly on my hips when I had left home had begun to cling sheepishly around my shrunken waist.

I did not intentionally neglect to eat. In contrast, I sought out food that my youthful self associated with comfort. Harvard crest-emblazoned waffles with crimson strawberry syrup from the dining hall were a favorite of mine. I also made sure to take the psychology students’ surveys to snag a bag of berry-flavored purple packaged Skittles as compensation. I also distinctly remember eating a thick parmesan-filled wrap from the campus Au Bon Pain, crying hysterically between chews, riddled with a blend of homesickness and hunger finally being sated. My parents were so concerned that I had nonchalantly not eaten meal after meal, day after day, that they called the resident advisor who took me out the very next day to an Indian restaurant to give me a taste of home. While I appreciated the gesture, I was further reminded at my distance from home, naïve at 16 years old, I had ordered the incorrect item and not only had lost my appetite even more, but did not enjoy the eating experience either. My parents then visited with a couple of weeks left to spare in the program and brought along a box of pignoli nut cookies, my favorite, from over a century-old east village bakery, Veniero’s. I consumed the contents of that box in its entirety that very same night.

While I had lost a little over ten pounds in the two months that I was away from home, I quickly recuperated and happily ate a meal from a fast food place on a rest stop driving back home to New York from Cambridge. That same summer, I restored the weight effortlessly, eating my favorites once again. It wasn’t even two years later before I started losing weight from not eating again. This time, I was 17 years old and it was the fall semester of my senior year in high school. I was overcome with anxiety about the college admissions process to such a degree that I was convinced I couldn’t swallow or breathe. Every time I ingested anything, even liquids, I felt there was a blockage in my throat. I went to the nurse’s office for the first time in my senior year where I sat and nibbled on the peanut butter and jelly sandwich my mother packed for me, to make sure I did not choke unsupervised. Little did anyone know that before this episode, I threw away my packed lunch daily for fear of weight gain. I also went to the Emergency Room where imaging of my esophagus yielded no blockages. Physicians suggested that it was all a figment of my imagination due to high levels of stress. They were correct. Once I had been admitted early decision to an Ivy League in early December, I celebrated by eating one of my favorite foods – bhel chaat – an Indian street food delicacy made up of cubed potatoes, fried pieces of dough, tangy mint and sweet tamarind chutneys, onions, and masala spices.

The next instance of starvation was rather deliberate and occurred the very next year, my first year of college at the University of Pennsylvania. Homesickness struck again. At first, I did not eat out of the absence of an appetite similar to the one I experienced while in Harvard. This absence of appetite did not negate the necessity of eating for survival and so I went to the dining hall with every intention of eating. What happened next was that I naively believed I could take food from only one station after I heard a dining hall cook tell some other freshmen that they took over their fair share of pasta. I found it horrifying to be told that I was glutton, dabbling in sin, so I took a sad amount of food in comparison to my peers and made due. Surviving on that amount, my reason for not eating evolved into one of anxiety and fear around gaining weight. Perhaps the restricted eating had aroused me some and starvation became euphoric in quality – almost ascetic-like – as if I achieved a high. I then systemically cut out all food, sometimes allowing myself half of a plain bagel with butter the entire day or a sleeve of butter crackers. Back then I did not discount food based on quality and nutritional information, but instead, the quantity.

As a barista in a weight restored body, ten years later after receiving my undergraduate degree, I heat up and dole out items I would never ingest, although I admittedly imagined ingesting them. Flaky butter croissants, crumbly scones, granulated sugar-strewn muffins, and chocolate brownies and cookies were all included. I soon found out that I was not the only employee who did not take advantage of the discounted food and beverage. My manager who was already intermittently fasting was also attempting a crash diet that was strongly leaning towards liquid-only. She proudly announced on the headset that she had lost 10 pounds. The weight loss – the number –reverberated in my ear. I had gained 5 times as much weight, and this fact stings more with each passing day. Everyone except I, clapped. One person noticed and called me out. I pretended not to be paying attention.

Whenever I mention the deep-rooted pain I feel at having gain weight, there follows scorn. I’m given a dose of tough love and coldly told that I could always go back – that I had the power of bringing into motion history repeating itself and that I could always starve myself again. The truth is, I cannot ever go back to walking over 20,000 steps a day and not eating a morsel of food. The tough love is more than that – its haunting.  

The truth is, even while in recovery – taking medication to manage compulsive behavior and systematically trading exercise for regular day-to-day movement for a sedentary lifestyle  - I’m still depriving myself. Unbeknownst to me, I had been practicing an Anna Wintour-like diet of two soft-boiled eggs and spinach for lunch everyday. The spinach wasn’t sautéed, and now, I have eliminated the spinach altogether.  Every morning I have my low-calorie high protein, high fiber cereal in a cup of flax milk fortified with more protein. For dinner, I have two eggs and chia seed flax crackers or an egg and two cauliflower-based low carb sandwich thins. I rely mostly on fruit to keep from going hungry, which I consumer after lunch and dinner. I portion and measure out everything I eat. There is a kitchen drawer I have set aside for myself, the contents of which include two sets of measuring spoons. I have a food scale in the pantry that I religiously turn off as soon as I use it so as to preserve the battery life for as long as possible.  

Ever since I began working as a barista a month ago, I have resorted to eating a single string cheese before my noon shift. I plan on systemically peeling the string cheese to elongate the eating experience while sitting in my car a few minutes before my shift today as well. The truth is, I want to change. I want to be able to bake banana bread and eat it too. I want to be freed from the numbers; however, there is no escaping my blouses and pants no longer fitting. I don’t need to know my weight to know that I gained again.

Chapter 1

A one to two to three ratio of vanilla syrup is added to each successively higher volume cup before adding a combination of dark cold brew coffee and sweet cream foam that depending on the flavor, requires either a scoopful of malt powder or caramel with sea salt. I was taking down notes. “You have such good handwriting,” said the young woman with winged black eyeliner that outlined hazel eyes beaming beneath a bleach blonde-dyed fringe. “You look like a reader,” she told me, all knowingly. I was behind the counter of a coffeehouse where I was in training to become a barista and did not feel it was the right place and time to give my ‘I’m anything but fine’ unabridged reply: I’m not a reader. I’m more of a writer. Instead, I answered with, “I’ve had a lot of schooling,” which was true. A self-proclaimed academic, I had attended one of the nation’s top ten high schools, Ivy League universities, and a whole host of other academically inclined research programs and internships. This exchange with a svelte figured barista, who concocted caloric beverages with nonchalance, was no exception.

During another shift, another barista who was too likely a decade younger than me and belonging to the Generation Z population, whipped out her cell phone while on the clock and exclaimed, “This is my puppy!” With an aversion to all things domestic and furry, I managed to squeak out “cute.’” That same day, yet another barista showed me stickers that she planned on handing out in a concerted effort to establish customer relations. I wasn’t amused and was instead horrified at the gesture.

Some baristas became aware of my age, 32, which yielded two reactions. One was shock. Even I look in the mirror and have trouble remembering my age. Without a wrinkle or gray hair in sight, I would have asked for my ID when purchasing Bellini at the local market as well. The second reaction was in the form of an apologetic statement: “That’s ok. You’re all the more wiser.” Perhaps some type of wisdom did inform my decision to take on this job as a coffee barista at this age. I did not don an apron that cloaks my corporate-like outfits for the minimum wage. Instead, this job was meant to save me from my over decade-long eating disorder – anorexia nervosa- and depression. Three weeks in and it has not done much other than to distract me for a handful of hours a week.

The manager and barista betrothed with the black apron of mastery in the art of brewing, steaming, and coffee culture –replicating drinks made famous on social media – is training me. Her first task was instructing me to grind and brew coffee according to a cadence. Every 30 minutes I would have to make a new batch of coffee. To ensure that I kept to schedule, I had to use a stopwatch that I could either leave next to the coffeemaker or wear on my person. To have a ticking time bomb that would eventually beep on my chest, struck me as oddly macabre. It was as if I was back in my basement, performing HIIT - high intensity interval training – routines that included squat jumps, burpees, and running in place. A periodic beep informed me of when to switch the exercise I was doing. It was I and the stopwatch in a dank basement outfitted with a matte black exercise mat that I left with sweat angels  - the marks my body would leave upon me finishing and lying flat on the floor. My knees would buckle beneath me as I clambered up the stairs. I would blink and see stars. Sometimes I would make my way to the floor-length mirror, lift up my damp shirt and see my heart visibly beating beneath my rib cage. Sinewy blood vessels mapped my arms in green and blue.

When I shuddered, the manager said as an aside, “some people find wearing the stopwatch triggering.” She started to laugh. I stared at her and she quickly stopped. Not even five minutes later she mentioned on her headset that she couldn’t drink the highly crafted coffee concoctions because she was on a diet. ‘Diet’ reverberated in my ear. I ignored it, as I had trained myself to do ever since I was forced into treatment for anorexia nervosa. “I’m intermediate fasting,” she said. I quickly corrected her internally before someone else did. She was intermittent fasting and could only eat between 12 pm and 8 pm. I was triggered, but that did not stop me from my incessant thoughts about eating later, after my shift: two soft-boiled eggs and eight chia seed-infused crackers, followed by an inordinate amount of fruit to fill me up. These were part of my safe foods – the items I did not fear eating because I did not associate them with weight gain. They were bland, mostly unprocessed, whole foods made up of lean proteins and no refined carbs. I no longer fasted. I no longer starved myself – not to the degree that results in weight loss. I was beyond that physically, having gained over 50 pounds in the span of three years. Still, I was triggered by her well-thought out plan to shed pounds in pursuit of vanity. She had an upcoming wedding to attend.

A few weeks ago, I too attended a wedding. I was wearing a sari for the first time: a backless silk blouse with a low neckline that bound my chest like a bodice. My petticoat circled my hips. My entire torso and waist would be exposed if it weren’t for the yards of sheer fabric wrapped and pleated around my body that let other steal glances of my tummy with every step I took and didn’t take. My midsection was bloated in spite of the abdominal and core work I performed in and out of the gym. When physically restoring weight after severely restricting food intake for a long duration, a bulk of the nutrition is drawn toward the abdominal area where there are vital organs that need immediate attention. Eventually, the weight is meant to distribute after eating adequately and consistently – something I still have not committed to. For this reason, my midsection remains rotund, perpetually bloated, and makes it impossible to wear anything but drawstring- waist pants.

The dress code at the coffeehouse is preppy without the prep. That is to say, only a palette of cool colors are permitted – navy blue, white (tops only), black, and khaki – colors that enable the forest green apron to pop.  I walk into work in creative-corporate chic, as if I was as a staff writer or editorial associate at a magazine. I dressed in a V-neck white top purchased while on a trip to Rhode Island from a New England stalwart shop. The top was tucked into textured grey harem pants I picked up from a boutique in a chic Long Island village. Another time I wore a Victorian ruffled collared button down shirt tucked in an elastic waist pair of black denim pants and patent leather wingtip black oxford shoes. My manager insists that I dress more comfortably. “Wear jeans, like us,” she said on more than one occasion. Jeans were my enemy. They were uncomfortable reminders of thigh gap I no longer had. The jean’s waist no longer loosely balanced on my hipbones that once upon time had thrust out.  She had no idea that what I was wearing were the few items left in my wardrobe that fit this three-year-old body. Three years since I walked out of my last form of inpatient treatment for anorexia nervosa.

I’m about five weeks into being a barista, and since I am part-time, only about ten shifts old. I only know how to concoct some shaken cold drinks and warm bakery items, paninis, and sandwiches. My therapist asked me if I would be triggered working in a place where I would have to mix dairy and alternatives into my go-to choice of black coffee. I confidently responded that I wouldn’t be. Of course, I haven’t attempted the task yet, but what I did not expect was being triggered when at the “warming” position. Smelling the aroma wafting out from the oven brought on flashbacks. I would inhale deeply, just like I did when I was starving myself while in graduate school. I would walk down Broadway on the Upper West Side that was lined with outdoor dining patios, pining for the crusty contents of the breadbasket dabbed in a golden puddle of olive oil and the crisp lettuce in preparation for the main course. I would slow down my naturally quick gait to smell the food cart fumes.

My body and mind are still in a state of malnourishment. In over eight years, I still haven’t had my period despite weight restoration. While at work, I’m inordinately careful not to touch the food I heat up with my hands. It is only in my mind’s eye that I see my hand release its grip from the shrink-wrapped plastic cover or parchment paper that acts as a barrier between my skin and the palm-sized chocolate chip cookie. I can just see myself breaking it in half in slow motion, identical to the social media reel made famous by breaking apart the thick cookie made in the famous New York City-outpost, Levain Bakery. I see melted chocolate staining my unpainted fingernails as per mandated by the coffeehouse. I was triggered by the food, by the fact that no one had prior knowledge of my battle with an eating disorder that almost took my life a few years ago and is still taking my life now.

They don’t know me. They don’t know the vibrancy that dimmed, evolved, and transitioned into an evident depression. “Are you ok?” my manager asked me. “Do you want to sit down?” she asked me twice. My façade provides no farce. I did not want to be there. I never saw my life pan out this way. Graduating with degrees from establishments so many others and I hold on pedestals, I never imagined that I would be in training to work at a coffeehouse. It was not only that I housed other, less humbling aspirations, but it was also the time. The meeting was outside of my availability, but was mandatory. I was nearing 8 pm. The latest I would work was 6 pm so that I could be home in time to take my second shower, shampoo and condition my hair, cook and eat dinner and take an hour to consume fruit while watching Gilmore Girls before taking my vitamins and melatonin, going to bed, and waking up by 4:45 the next morning.

I had to wake up at that time not for a job, not to care for my imaginary child, nor to send my imaginary husband off to work. I had to give myself ten minutes to prepare my breakfast that I measured with a scale and measuring cups paired with a cup of black coffee that brewed in the meantime. I then would give myself up to thirty minutes to eat before race-walking on the treadmill in the basement for another thirty minutes. I had to move my body as my permission to eat. I was also moving my body because I could not escape comparing myself to my mother, my senior by 27 years old, who never missed a day on the treadmill. As you could deduce, my mind was in overdrive throughout the meeting. Still, I tried to pay attention, if anything, to make the time pass by. I learned how to make a latte and also learned how to implement the acronym, LATTE -Listen, Acknowledge, Think, Take Action, and Explain – to liaise between the customer and company.

My manager picked me out of the group of thirty or so twenty-something year-olds. “What did you learn today?” she asked me. This was the third time that she called on me. They did not know me. They did not know that I was never called out and instead called on. I was always the girl who voluntarily raised her hand to answer questions, initiate discussions, and volunteer to read. The same person who would soon enough become my best friend called me “goody two-shoes” in grade school. I was still in shock at her prodding into my presence of mind. I quickly shook away the thought of being a subpar student and instead reasoned that she called on me because of my unmistakable presence. I know me.