Hungover & Hungry: Misadventures at the Safeway Deli Counter

Not too long ago, on a night much like tonight, I drank almost the entire contents of a 1.5 Liter bottle of Merlot. I was with other people; it's not like it was a sad affair of me alone drinking a giant bottle of wine in my room until 2am. No. I was drinking with friends until 630am. I slept at my friend's place and I woke up just about noon and I had to leave. If I waited any longer traffic would have been hell. I got myself together in about a half hour and left. I felt fine (I puked at about 5am). It's about a 45 minute drive from my friend's place to mine and I felt alright considering all the wine that was working its way through my system. I hadn't eaten in many hours and it was making me feel sick. I decided to stop at the Safeway that was just the exit before my house. All I could think about was getting a sandwich from the deli counter and eating the fuck out of it.

I got to the deli counter after picking up some other essentials (A carton of ice cream and a small bag of Cheetos Puff) I waited behind two people to order my sandwich. As I waited in line it was at that moment that my body signals to me, "Hey... we're still drunk" Not super drunk, but that am I hungover or drunk? phase of the whole thing. I waited in line entirely too long. These were the slowest sandwich makers I had ever encountered. I've never seen anyone spread condiments slowly til that afternoon.

It was finally my turn and I was ready with my simple request. "I was roast beef, on the french bread, just mayo."

She responded cheerfully, "Would you like to make it a meal?"

"No."

"But you get chips and a drink for just two extra dollars."

Stone cold I replied, "I understand what the meal is, but I don't want chips and a drink, I just want the sandwich."

She makes the sandwich and asks me what cheese I'd like. I didn't want anything on my sandwich but meat and a condiment. Don't judge me; I don't like veggies and I don't like cheese with roast beef.

Anyway I said I didn't want cheese, "Just mayo. That's it."

She makes the sandwich, she's just about to cut it and she says, "Wouldn't you rather get the meat to make a sandwich, that would be cheaper."

I was appalled. She just made me the damn sandwich! And isn't she supposed to be upselling me like with the meal deal?

I said calmly, yet sternly, as if I was a serial killer ready to lose my shit, "Honestly, I drank a bottle of wine by myself last night and all I want is a sandwich with no effort on my part, so please just give me my sandwich."

She wrapped it up and I took it. I did self-check out and I left.

She really pissed me off. Just do as I ask! I really wanted to make a point. I really wanted to just drop my basket of unhealthy items and storm out. But then it would have taken me longer to get a sandwich that I so desperately wanted, and I wanted a sandwich just a little bit more than I wanted to make a point.

Breaking Down

I've been put through an emotional wringer the last 9 months, and I feel like I can't talk about it the way I want to talk about it. I feel like I'm not allowed to talk about it. I've experienced every type of emotion a person can experience in a short time frame and I've had to keep it all to myself. There have been secrets and private conversations. There are other people's privacy involved as well. I also just can't feel what I want to feel because I won't let myself do that. Even though I want to talk about it with friends, I don't, because I don't want them to see me cry, or break down. I used to be such a depressed person. I used to feel defeated and hopeless all the time. I don't want to be that person, and I haven't been that person in a very long time. The fact that I don't want to be that sad person anymore has made it so I don't allow myself to feel any unpleasant emotions and I won't express them. It's beginning to blow up in my face. I'm trying to find a balance to where I can be sad for the things I've been experiencing lately, but not lose myself into an episode of depression where I eat my feelings and listen to Dashboard Confessionals and cry my days away.

There are so many things I don't understand and I probably never will because I'm too afraid to get my answers. I'm too afraid to find out that no matter how great they may say I am, I'm not great enough. That there will always be someone better than me out there. That I'll never be anything more than someone's 2nd place. Because if that is the case, if that is the truth, then what's the point? Why should I keep putting myself out there when no one is going to care. Why should I put myself out there when all it's going to do is take me to finish line just to have someone else shove off the track before I can cross the finish line.

I'm not looking for love. I'm just looking to not get hurt. I didn't plan on the last year of my life to happen, but it did. I never wanted a guy to offer me everything I ever wanted only to ignore me for months at a time because he had other things to do than to not be with me. To tell me he wanted to be with me only to never follow through on his word.

I never wanted to make a connection with someone so deep, so real, just to sit around and wonder why he doesn't see me the same way I see him.

And there's so much more than that, but just too personal and dark to talk about in a public forum such as this. I've had to deal with it on my own as people make comments to me about what appears to be the truth when in reality if they knew what's been going on with me they wouldn't make any comments. They'd wonder how I'm able to function so well. I'm a girl that can keep her shit together for the sake of appearances. It's an Oscar worthy performance.

Nothing makes you feel more alone than feeling like you have to feel and process pain by yourself.

I'm writing this to express myself, not to get your pity. I'm writing this because I need to figure out how to deal with everything that has happened and the things that are currently happening in my life.


"Figure out what you want, and learn how to ask for it."

I've been trying to do that ever since I heard that line last December.

An Excerpt From Whatever it is I'm Writing

So I'm putting together a book, a memoir... I don't know what it is as I'm still living my story. Just wanted to share part of what I've been working on. Enjoy.


When you're in high school and your friends don’t think you’re pretty, or at least as pretty as they are, they boast about your great personality. It’s their loop hole way of redirecting the question, “Is she pretty?” Instead of insulting their friend, they say, “Well, she has a great personality!” I don’t have concrete proof that my friends didn’t think I was pretty, but they gave me at least three make overs in a two year time frame. Oprah didn’t give away that many make overs at that rate. The first make over is fun and exciting. You get a few new outfits, style your hair differently, and your friends show you that you don’t need all that blue eye shadow. The first make over is welcomed. The second make over raises some concerns. Why wasn’t the first make over good enough? I stopped wearing blue eye shadow, was there still something wrong? By the third make over it’s not fun anymore, it’s just insulting. At the time I was convinced that there was something wrong with the way I looked. I never thought of myself as ugly, but I didn’t look like all the other girls in school who had boyfriends and admirers. Perhaps if I grew up in some place in the middle of the country, instead of California, I would have been Homecoming Queen. Basically, what I’m saying is that I had issues with my looks. Shocking, I know. A teenage girl who’s insecure about her looks, who knew? More than my face, I was self conscious about my body. I was bigger than all of my friends. While they were anywhere from a size three to a size seven, I was anywhere from a size nine to a size fifteen. Any time a guy wasn’t into me I believed it was because of my weight. Now maybe for some guys, that wasn’t the case, maybe my weight had nothing to do with it, but I’m sure there were a few guys where having a skinny girlfriend was important to them. While I want to say that guys in high school are douche bags for being that shallow, I can’t, because I was shallow too. Just because I was fat didn’t mean that I didn’t have a certain type of guy I wanted. I think people forget that no matter what you are: fat, ugly, short, tall... we all want someone gorgeous to go out with. I always blamed my weight because according to my friends, my personality was too great to be dismissed. I believed that the guys I liked didn’t want to get romantically involved with me because of the Jack Sprat look we would have a couple.

Recently, I’ve been hearing from friends and family that I need to stop thinking so negatively about my appearance. I understand what they’re saying and where they’re coming from, but it’s so hard to change negative thinking. I just grew up in an environment where my peers tore me down. Senior year I took home economics. It was an easy class and you got to have one of those mechanical babies, they cry and you have to figure out if they need food, or a diaper change, and the baby has a monitor to see how well you did taking care of it. It was pretty cool. Anyway, two of my friends were in my class, Monica, and Jessica. Majority of my friends started having sex when they were sixteen. It was like they all got this memo that read: Go have sex with your boyfriends! And be sure that you make it your number one priority! I turned sixteen; no memo. I was terminally single while my friends would die and wither away if they didn't have a guy to call their own. To me, it seemed like they felt they had a sense of entitlement, as if they were more special than I was because they had a boyfriend. One day at school, for lunch, they decided all the girls would get together to have “Girl Talk.” It was so they could talk about their boyfriends, compare how much their hymens bled on the first time, and to see if anyone was into anything kinky like “Girl on Top.” Well I don’t know if it got that personal, because I wasn’t invited. Only the girls with boyfriends could go, which left me by myself. Cue the “Awwww.”

Alright, stop it, I don’t want your sympathy. But that was bitchy of them to do right? It’s one of the many reasons why I prefer the company of men to women. Perhaps this treatment added to my urgency to find a boyfriend, so I could be like my friends. Anyway, back to home economics class. Monica and Jessica sat fairly close to each other and I was jealous that they got to chat in class all the time. One day I walked by their seats as they were talking and I playfully said to them, “You guys need to stop talking without me.” as I walked back to my seat. Then Jessica said, “Well once you have sex, you can talk about what we’re talking about.” I don’t know what bothered me more, that she said it, or that she said it loud enough for the entire class to hear. Kids in school called her a “slut” and a “whore” a lot and I always defended her. Well, up until then I did.