Not My Home, Their Home
By Jessica Smith

Halen could never go right home after therapy. First you were alone in a room with someone baring your soul, then you were supposed to go home and let everything you just spoke about marinate. It drove her crazy. Crazier then she already was, hence the therapy.
She would get out of work early one day a week to go see her shrink. After she would drive around listening to loud music as if she were a teen. When that wasn't enough she would just go home. She'd go straight to her computer and burn a CD. The CD would reflect her mood. Then she would listen to the CD all week, furthering her mood. So she mentioned it in therapy.
"Listen, when I leave here, I feel a million times worse then when I walked in." Halen sat on the very edge of the couch giving this information. She wore a thick-cabled beige sweater that was bulky.
"What do you do when you go home?" Her therapist asked.
"I sit and think about everything we've discussed. What I should've really said, what I need to say more of." "Can you go somewhere else?"
"I used to drive around. It doesn't work anymore. I go home and I'm alone and I feel worse."
"Go shopping? To a bookstore? Diner? Coffee shop?" Her therapist had her arms folded across her chest.
"Why do I even come here? It just makes me worse." They talked further but came to no resolution.
Halen decided to change her appointment time so she'd go to therapy on her lunch hour then go back to her office. This worked for two weeks and then she started to cry at work.
So the time was switched back and she was left to fend for herself once again.
A diner, coffee shop, only losers eat alone. She took a different way home from therapy trying to find a place, any place. Then she just parked the car in a little village area of town and walked.
There was a place she'd always driven by, but never thought to go in. Van Gogh's Ear. A cafŽ, coffee bar, coffee house, whatever the people from that show Friend's called it, that's what it wasÉ Halen didn't drink coffee. She was an elfish anxious woman already. Caffeine was indeed a drug when it enter her system, which she hadn't consumed anything with a drop of caffeine for over 2 years.
"Would you like a table?" She was asked upon entering. Only losers go to places like this alone.
"Yes, please." She was given a menu. The place was filled with books for sale on every wall, paintings for sale. People played chess and checkers, a band was setting up. Three people with small instruments, a sign said something about jazz. Halen hated jazz.
"Can I get you something?" Her waitress looked like every other in that profession.
"What sort of soups do you have?"
"Roasted red pepper." "Sure," Halen told the waitress, "I'll have that."
"Anything else?" Halen scanned the menu. Even decaf drinks had the drug that drove her crazy.
"Um, do you have any bottled water?"
"Pelligrino. That's it. We have a large coffee selection." "Oh. Yes, I see that, but I don't really drink coffee." The waitress started to check out the band's status out of the corner of her eye. "
"OK. No coffee, would you like some tea? We have some decaf teas." The waitress was probably hopped up on caffeine as she stood there.
"Even decaf drinks have caffeine." Halen wasn't sure if this was true or not, but it was a risk she wasn't willing to take. The last time she had half a cup of coffee she ended up in the emergency room. Her blood felt like it was screaming. "Just the Pelligrino please and the soup. Bread too, if you would."
With the waitress gone there was nothing for Halen to do. So she sunk into her seat and watched the people. She was 30. She didn't look 30, so she liked trying to guess the ages of others.
She had the inclination that only losers ate alone, went places alone, but upon inspecting the room, there was no one she would like to talk to or approach her for that matter. Baggy pants, scruffy beards, cups and cups of coffee on the tables and everyone was talking loudly. She knew none of these people were as old as her. She also knew that she didn't belong in this coffee place. She could smell caffeine in the air and it stirred her heart.
The waitress brought her order without speaking. Halen preferred it that way at this point. She was growing disgusted of her surroundings. The soup was cold, the bread was stale and she was not brought a glass for her bottled water.
"Christ," she said aloud to no one. She didn't care who heard her and she couldn't help thinking she'd be better off at Starbuck's. She laid a twenty-dollar bill on the table, figuring that it would more then cover her bill.
She left and walked to her car. She got in and was about to turn the radio up really loud like she would do directly after therapy, but she stopped herself. Instead of going home and judging herself, she realized that she was silently judging others. She didn't feel so bad about herself.
Halen realized it was like when she would watch the Jerry Springer show as a kid. At least she wasn't like those people. Pulling away from Van Gogh's Ear, she realized she liked not being like those people. Subsequently, she stopped at Van Gogh's Ear once a week and continued to not drink coffee. Halen continued to silently judge. Everyone does it.