How my caffeine consumption has changed throughout the past two years, and so has my handle on life.
Kate Henderson (she/they) // Crew Writer
Andy Poystila (he/him) // Production Manager
Inner Child:
Whether it was eating sand at the beach, drinking soda before bedtime or hiding your 3DS under your pillow, as kids the most effective way to learn to take care of yourself was seeing what happened when you did exactly what you’re told not to do. My perspective has grown, and yet this approach seems to be the only consistent thing in the rollercoaster that has been the past two years of my life. Well, that and my need for caffeine.
Younger Self: Year One – the Bottled Vanilla Iced Coffee
Get eight hours of sleep and a balanced diet.
During what felt like an adult summer camp, my first week of independence started in Capilano University Residence. With the same impulses as a kid in a candy store, I discovered how delicious it is to drink an iced coffee and meet people until three in the morning each day, fueling both an elevated heart rate and my extroverted nature. It was a high of meeting friends, lovers and acquaintances in a way that I’d never done before. The thought of being perceived as ‘exciting’ and ‘unique’ was exhilarating. This high could only last for so long, and so could my university dining dollar account balance. Turns out, each of those bottled iced coffees cost eight dollars, and every night of four hours of ‘cool girl’ sleep was costing me my sanity.
With my counsellor’s prognosis of manic episodes and a dining dollar balance of zero, by late November, I had reached the peak of all the chaos. I was told to start tracking my ‘routine’ in a Google Sheets document with a prescription of eight hours of sleep each night and no iced coffee.
Younger Self: Year Two- the Bosa Building Cafe Coffee
Communicate your needs and emotions.
I just shit my pants. No, literally.
The coffee had nothing to do with this, rather some beer and some Tacofino from the night before in my system… and confrontation. I remember looking at myself in the mirror,
like I was some overgrown baby for being scared to tell someone else how I felt, with no diaper to embrace me. In a weird fucked up kind of way, this soiled moment showed me that I’d need to work on my methods of planting seeds of communication. While not as thrilling as my manic episodes at residence, being honest about how I felt to someone seemed risky. After a year of mentioning when I didn’t feel comfortable with a joke, or something as significant as why I was deciding to move out, I have learned that there is no risk communicating when you know the right people.
The most prominent irrationality left was my finances after ordering Skip the Dishes and eating tofu for a year straight (two dollar tofu does not cancel out every Breka bocconcini sandwich ordered at 1 a.m., woof).
Year Three- Keurig Colombian Roast
It’s clear that the path I took to learning healthy routines was pretty unorthodox and had some pretty bizarre methods. I mean, I can’t believe that what finally proved to me that eight hours of sleep isn’t propaganda was literally going insane… and I had to shit myself to start healthily communicating. I hope all these gruesome details provide comfort: I’ve found a whole new angle on life without the constant guidance of parental advice and that it’s okay to find your own rhythm in ridiculous firsthand experiences! It could be the nature of how we learn in youth and we can know we’ve grown older because we know how to be there for ourselves.