It’s funny how the universe allows you to meet the most random people to have the most much-needed realizations.
When people ask me of the most peculiar memory I have in a coffee shop, I only have one memory in mind that stands out among the rest. What made it interesting was not the experience itself, but also how the experience looked like from my point of view.
A bit of a background…
It happened a few months after my first heartbreak from a romantic relationship.
At that time, I was already slowly getting back up my feet after going through the five (which seemed like forever) stages of grief and finally accepting things that happened that obliterated my previous relationship.
Given my nature as an overachiever who couldn’t stand being a “failure”, and my naivete when it comes to romantic relationships, I clung to that first relationship as if it was a lifeline, as if I couldn’t have a life without its existence, as if it completely defined who I am. Maybe it did at that time, since I still clung to it even when it was no longer healthy and it reached a point where both parties became toxic and codependent to a fault.
After spending a long time grieving over it, with my ego shattered in a million pieces because aside from that I was also dealing with other personal issues both family-related and academic-related.
To sum what I was going on at that time, I felt like I was the most unattractive person on the planet, a failure basically, and a total loser.
It went on for quite a while and then I finally decided to get back up my frail feet. It was far from easy to be honest, I was just blessed enough to be at the right place at the right time that I ended up gaining new and irreplaceable friends (
But I was still heartbroken back then for quite some time. Taylor Swift described how everything felt at that time perfectly. She always said that the world is different place for the heartbroken, how it "moves on a different axis, at different speeds.." How the heartbroken might "go through thousands of micro-emotions a day trying to figure out how to get through..." and all that. It was so poetic, and to think that I used to criticize her for making way too many songs about her exes. I finally understood. I felt like writing several whole chapters at that time as well.
I needed time to heal, and did just that. Eventually I gained enough confidence to learn how to dress nicely and spent a lot of time on coffee shops, mostly to study or get things done, but also jive with my surroundings.
Coffeeshops at that time were a Mecca for my five senses:
- the sound of Lofi coffee shop and people tapping on their laptops minding their own business or voices of people's private and polite murmurs in the distance
- the lighting that was neither too bright or too dim but balances and at the same time accents the furniture and visuals in the coffee shop
- the feel of the walls: I loved the texture of the brick-styled walls of the coffee shop which gave the ambience a more European kind of look
- the scent of ground coffee beans the moment one walks in to the shop is to die for, it's as if every cell in my body just heard its national anthem of productivity and was ready to get things done
- Finally, the taste of coffee. Because of course, what other socially-accepted drug will inspire you to get things done?
So of course, you can't blame me if I wanted to dress up exceptionally to fully feel functional every time I spend time in a coffee shop.
So one day, in my expensive-looking maroon top, with freshly painted matte maroon finger nails, and maroon lips (I was dressing up for my girls), a stranger moved forward to talk to me.
"May I help you?" I asked since he and his two friends were stalling for quite a while behind my seat. I tactically chose the one in the corner, as to not be bothered or noticed.. but I got noticed anyway.
They were Korean ESL (English as Second Language) students and wanted to start a conversation. Eventually they weren't that well-versed in the language so both parties needed to adjust.
"What are you doing?" The most good-looking one of them pointed at my booklet about Carl Jung, and of course, at the sight of the tall, lean, pale and attractive-looking person (He literally looked like a leading man in one of them K-dramas, and had the build for it too.), I flushed and told him "I was just doing some reading".
He was interested I could tell, and after a couple of awkward small-talks, he eventually asked for my number and asked if I had Kakao Talk and wanted to hang out that evening.
For a while there, I felt my nearly extinct self-confidence erupt like a volcano. That caught me off-guard. It was ridiculous. I'd never be the one who'd see herself in some scene taken from a K-drama. I wasn't even able to shower that day. Sort of TMI but it's true. In my defence, the power was out in the dormitory I was staying, and it affected the water supply.
That evening, I couldn't say yes to his offer because I had to meet with my girls. However I gave him my number and we texted on and off for the whole week.
I've seen a lot of Koreans in the coffee shop with varying degrees of attractiveness, and I agree, most of them are culturally attractive by default (or is that just social conditioning?) but I never expected any of them to try to engage in a conversation with the locals. I've always thought Koreans had their own cultural preferences, and I didn't think I fit the bill.
After dallying for a week on KakaoTalk leading to the eventual second and last meet-up (which turned out to be disastrous by the way 🤣), he disappeared and called it quits.
I guess I was just too overwhelming for him at that time, who knows?
But that moment at the coffeeshop left me grinning on my way out. Probably because of the kilig, exacerbated by the palpitations from the coffee, but partly also of the realization that I wasn't as unattractive or a lost cause as I made myself out to be in my head. It inspired me to try again, not only in my dating life, but also in other more important aspects which required a lot of my confidence.
Even though my correspondence with "Luke" (Yes, his English name was Luke) fizzled out, I feel thankful for the guy. He showed up at exactly at the right time and at the right moment, and left exactly when he needed to. If he didn't show up at that exact time that day, I wouldn't have stopped feeling sorry for myself, and wouldn't have gained the boost of confidence I needed to try again at life, and try better.
It gave me the courage to start talking to other guys and eventually learn from them and their point of views on how relationships work or don't work for them, and in some way, I'm also kind of thankful because it somehow led me to the person I am currently with 🌸.
And it was all because of that 15-minute K-drama coffeeshop moment . It really is funny how the universe allows you to meet the most random people.
Credits:
Jonas Jacobsson from Unsplash
Roxanne Marie is the twenty-year-old something who calls herself the Protean Creator.
She is a chemical engineer by profession, pole-dancer and blogger by passion and frustration, and lastly, a life enthusiast. She is on a mission to rediscover her truth through the messy iterative process of learning, relearning and unlearning. Currently, she works as a science and research instructor in her hometown, Tagbilaran City, all the while documenting her misadventures, reflections and shenanigans as a working-class millennial here on Hive.
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