thank god for restaurant work

I never recieved my college degree. I earned it, sure— as much as you can earn anything in a university—I just never got the physical copy. Before it reached me, my landlord sold the house I was living in, and I moved from Boulder to Nashville. I never gave them a forwarding address. 

Tonight at work I had a 30 person table—parents and children and friends all celebrating each other over dinner for whatever reason. They treated me like a dog—taking pictures of me without asking, not noting my name or looking at my face. I overheard one of them talking to another after waving me away, “my daughter who, as you know, is starting at Harvard in the fall—“ I wish this was hyperbole. Way too on the nose.

After they left, I spent the better part of an hour cleaning up after them—clearing, sweeping, scrubbing—I brought a trash bag to their table to clean up the bits of food and trash they’d left and to save us several trips back to the kitchen. My coworker said, “genius!” 

“It’s that art school degree.” I’m hilarious.

We laughed. I think it gets tiring when the most regular interaction you have with people is them telling you what to bring to their table in exchange for hopefully 20%, usually less. 

Still I am grateful, all the way through to my core, for restaurant work. It is there for those of us who need it, and for those of us who love it. The community you find working in a restaurant is unmatched, truly. You make friends hard and fast and you become important to each other with impressive speed and sincerity. You don’t get friends like that anywhere else—you just don’t.

I love the people I work with, I love working hard and being on my feet and balancing a fucked up amount of things at once. I love that I make a living taking care of people. I love working in restaurants, 

I just have some things to say about it I guess.  

An important thing to know for those who’ve never worked in a restaurant is that the server who carries your dirty napkin from the table to the trash for you is the most beautifully dynamic person you’ll ever have the goddamn pleasure of speaking to.

Your server studied philosophy and painting, hitchhiked for 2 years across South America, played shows with your favorite artist—the person bringing you your third Diet Coke writes children’s books. Your server is just as smart, if not smarter than you, they’re just poor. 

I wish people understood that. And maybe they do. I sound like I have a chip on my shoulder, and yeah whatever, I probably do. I’ve just had a long night, and I’m feeling like a sack of shit. 

I don’t have a savings account and I’m 27 years old. I don’t spend my days reading and writing and making things I’m proud of. I spend my days waiting tables and my nights drinking $10 Prosecco and writing about it. 

It could have been me, I just told myself, after looking at a photo on Instagram of a woman I graduated college with who is now living a life I wish I had. It would be so nice to believe in destiny. It would take the edge off the knowledge that I continue to fuck around and find myself in the very same place. 

I would like to believe that a life spent writing was just not meant for me. That it wasn’t mine and never could be. What a relief it would be to know that there’s nothing I could have done that would have made that life possible. It isn’t true though. If I’d worked harder—if I’d not moved to Nashville so eagerly—if I’d not gotten sick at 18 and spent the next 9 years digging myself out of psychiatrist offices and dialectical behavioral therapy and meal plans—if I’d come from generational wealth, maybe. 

I’d do anything to go back and do it over—what, exactly, I’m not sure. Just It. I did it wrong. Whatever it is that propels people forward towards their dreams or whatever, I don’t have it. 

I am discouraged before I begin. It’s a character flaw. I find myself tonight at the bottom of a very large, very familiar hole. 

I’m also aware that my safety, sure my existence, is a gift. I am grateful for both. And yeah, when you go through hard shit, your goals become smaller.

I was hospitalized four times in four years, the last of which I was maybe not going to make it back from. I had doctors telling me I would never recover—my family telling me they’d already grieved for me—my life dissolving. When I did not, in fact, kick the bucket, I was left with the mush that sickness had made of my life. For the past 5 years, I’ve tried to put it back together, with some success and a lot of.. not success. 

There are days when I am happy. There are days when I am devastated. There are days when I KNOW that here is all that matters—that scrubbing the floor of a restaurant is enough because I’m here scrubbing it. That this is good work and I’m doing it. That there’s no need for a grand plan for my life. That I’m a massive bitch for feeling like a failure for doing honest work that I love. 

I’m here, scrubbing the floor, sometimes happy. 

I have everything I need.