I saw myself in someone at a coffee shop today and I hated it.
It was early. Like, shortly after they opened at 6:30am. I was sitting in the corner spot I love between two big windows facing the street. There was a guy at the table next to mine with his dog and they both seemed miserable. Let's call him Guy. The dog was some kind of black lab mix. Let's call him Dog. He was cute, but in that older more tired kind of way when there's some gray mixed in with the whiskers. It kind of matched the owner's aesthetic, honestly.
Guy was probably late 40's or early 50's, clean-shaven, wearing a blue-green quarter zip. He had short salt-and-peppered hair that was coiffed up and over like it was running away from his furrowed brow and clenched jawline.
Guy looked stressed.
Dog was sitting on the ground by his chair, but as far as the taut leash would go. Guy was scowling at his computer. Neither Guy nor Dog looked like they'd felt happy lately. I was trying not to stare, but it was hard. This had been a perfectly normal thing to stumble across; but it ate at me. They weren't making a scene or causing problems or anything... their glum aura was just sort of percolating toward me.
Did Guy have Dog with him today unexpectedly? Or did he choose to? Guy wore a ring—did Guy's partner have to take the kids and maybe Guy got stuck with Dog?
Who knows.
Maybe they were just having an off morning.
Sitting there with both hands wrapped around the mug in front of me, I felt a pang of foreboding. I used to think of myself as a dog person. I grew up around plenty of dogs, and for years and years I couldn't wait to get one. When I finally started working remotely full-time, I went for it and adopted from a local rescue. At first, training a puppy and coexisting with a high-energy—and severely anxious—dog like Ava amplified my nervous system dysregulation to a level I hadn't felt since I was a kid at my dad's house.
It wound me up so much that I could feel myself shut down and block out the noises—slipping back into dissociating, wanting to scream. Suddenly, as an adult on the hook for the well-being of another living thing, I'd found myself wondering if dysregulation like that was the cause of my dad's frequent outbursts back then. Where he'd made it known quite plainly how he was feeling, I'd learned to do the opposite by putting on one hell of a poker face. Or, so I thought.
This morning, in the corner of the coffee shop, as I watched Guy's face contort with frustration while Dog lay there trying not to cause problems, I wondered which one was me.
I hated both options.
Have you ever seen yourself in someone else and not liked what you found?
onward.
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