The best part about eating out alone is that the likelihood of getting a great table and making BFFs with the staff go up significantly. Lucky for me, this morning I got both.
The single outdoor table was perfect for the idyllic morning I envisioned for myself: eating my cute little egg sandwich and cracking open a new book in the early morning shade. I found it hard to focus on my book because of the snippets of conversations I was picking up from passersby.
One giggly couple commented how a man’s shirt design looked like an abstract eggy pattern. I know that feeling when I hear it: delirious hunger.
Thanks to an earlier, hungrier version of myself, I had ordered food on the way. My friendly waitress (aka my new BFF) offered me a fresh basil cruller to apologize for the backed up kitchen (I love getting perks for a perceived inconvenience that wasn’t even an inconvenience). The eggy couple was swooning over any food in sight. Knowing I had a full breakfast feast on the way, I offered the girls a bite. Requiring zero encouragement, they pounced off the bench and next thing you know I’m breaking bread (cruller) with strangers.
The usual formalities followed.
“Do you live in the area?”
“Where are you from?”
After a few seamless connections over favorite Korean burritos in St. Louis to being a Jew from the suburbs, we established rapport and dove into the deep end.
“Do you write?
What do you have to say?
What do you think people have to know?”
And that’s how I got here — writing about things that I’ve got to say that I think people should know about.
And to me, that’s duality — the act of holding two seemingly opposite truths at the same time. The embrace of the gray, the paradoxical. The “you can have your cake and eat it too.”
I, as many others, grew up in a world where all I wanted to do was to be seen. I wanted to be understood. And the easiest way to be digested by others is by putting yourself in a palatable box that allows for people to compartmentalize you into mental frameworks that easily make sense to them.
I had reputations I was proud to uphold:
“Rachel, you are the most extroverted person in the world.”
“I don’t know anyone who has more friends than you”
“You’re always down for anything”
“You travel more than anyone I know”
Through my young adult years, all I wanted was to keep living up to these standards that I and others had set for myself. I was throwing myself into social gatherings, always planning my next trip, and saying yes — even when I felt overextended.
The pandemic changed a lot of things for a lot of people, and for me, it was stripping myself down to my truest, most authentic self — realizing these stereotypes of being a jet-setting, outgoing butterfly were just not in the cards. And when you lose the reference points of your social life through quarantine and isolation — who are we really?
As we slowly awakened out of the multi-year pandemic hibernation, we all got to choose how we reemerged: what we held onto from our past lives, and what we wanted to shed. I learned to embrace all of me — the me that shows up extroverted sometimes, and also loves a cozy solo night in. The me that travels but sometimes chooses to spend holiday weekends snuggling up with family or relaxing locally. My identity is a spectrum; I don’t fit in a box.
The acceptance of my duality and multi-passionate self was solidified in the witnessing of my neighbor-friends raising their two-year-old twins. Twin parents are a magical breed of parents: they have four arms instead of two, buy two sets of everything, and navigate peer relational dynamics before their kids are ever off to preschool. Their friends would often ask “Who’s the shy one?”, “Which one of them is friendlier?”
My friends would reply: “It depends. Sometimes one is, sometimes the other is.” They are both. They are all of it.
As the girls age, and especially as they navigate life by each other's side, it will be easy for the world to put them into boxes to help compartmentalize and differentiate between the two of them. But I know that this radical acceptance at home will allow for them to blossom in whatever concentric, dynamic, ebbing ways they choose.
It is beautiful to be all of you. That’s what I think people need to know. You don’t need to fit your full identity into your dating profile or an Instagram post or your LinkedIn bio. We are all a spectrum, and each moment to connect or share about ourselves gives people a flavor of our spectrum. I’ll proudly decline travel if I don’t feel up for it; I’ll leave a party when my social battery runs out — and I no longer feel like I am letting others/myself down.
So as a reminder and love letter to myself, fueled by the inspiration of the hungry couple at Little Egg — remember you have nothing to prove to anyone. You don’t need to be palatable to be understood.
You’re not a square meal — you’re a mother fucking buffet.