Straight up black. Venti.
Or, a chai tea latte, 3 pumps of sugar-free vanilla syrup with soy milk.
Being one of the simplest pleasures in life, while also being a dependency, is the utter essence and existence of coffee. Whether it be the drip coffee surging through your veins or numerous amount of sugary syrups, the simple extract of nature's most popular energy surge is somewhat defining of who we are individuals.
The waves of a dark roast brew splashing against the sides of the familiar feel of the cardboard to-go cup, that's the common start of the morning to the dependable, the bad-a**es. Those who put in the most effort, exhausting everything that they have in them. Surgeons, night-shift workers, nurses, the people who wake up each and every day to save lives, they take their coffee simple.
Simple, black, and bitter as hell.
A simple swirl of flavored creamer diffusing in a gentle spiral beneath the spiced aroma that floats above the cup, a familiar routine to the quirky New York journalist who shuffles their papers in their portfolio The quirk, the creativity, all in the essence of the coffee.
Everyone different in their own way: unique, original, yet with an existing label.
Whether it’s the judgment on your barista’s face when you walk into the cafe or the daunting expectations put upon you by the closest ones around you; we all get judged and ridiculed. Parents, peers, or even co workers in the workplace, they become a set of beady eyes that mark upon all the negatives that come up. Something as simple as coffee, doesn’t determine your personality. Something as complex as your affluence or status, doesn’t determine your success.
These relationships violate the lives of so many, practically people of all ages. Labels and stereotypes pollute even the fountain of youth, kick starting the judgmental nature of even the naive high school individual. The only differentiation is that those who are young don't comprehend the effects of their expressions and judgements, they don't see the damage that they can cause to someone else.
Pumpkin spice latte, the classic holiday drink filled with pungent spices and maybe two drops of actual caffeine, classifying every female who orders it; the common white girl. A negative label with prissy, entitled, and spoiled characteristics. But why judge someone’s personality on how they take a coffee? Something of a simple pleasure becomes a label and a condescending list of negativity.
Everyday, they stare. Their opinions float and slice through me, leaving empty spaces into which they pour even more negativity.
I walk into the room. Dumb blonde.
I tinker with the expensive earrings I’ve been saving up for over two years for. Rich priss.
I study so much which result in sleepless nights. Try hard wannabe.
I carry my own coffee cup with me, trying to wake up from the lack of sleep due to work until midnight last night.
Common white girl. Try hard wannabe. Rich priss. Dumb blonde.
People have become shallow, practically cloaked in ignorance to the complexity of the human race. Just because someone carries an aspect of a stereotype, doesn’t make them surrender to that category. Individuals with a black cup of coffee may be lazy, not hard-working at all, only drinking it for the taste. While others, may be victims to sleepless nights but indulge in the sugary drinks as a source of comfort, it doesn’t make them weak. We become so blind-sided that we take any possible thing to snag onto and complain about.But again, our society preys on the weaknesses or even the slightest flaws that are evident to us. 
You cannot judge the lifestyle or ideals of someone due to what they look like, what they wear, or what they drink. The true meaning of people and their motives, their backgrounds are not out in the open as they may sometimes seem to be. And we have no right to be so lazy as to ignore the true meanings of people, and try not to be as ignorant to the truth that we try and convince ourselves is the right one. The girl that dresses in expensive clothing everyday? She got all the money from her dead mother’s inheritance. The guy next to you in class who is an a**hole to how he treats everyone around him? Was raped by his father everyday since the age of 11. Yet we ignore it. We ignore the deeper beauty and complexity of individuals. We skim past the surface, and don’t delve deeper into the true meaning of ourselves. We are trained at a young age to judge and assume, collecting data and assumptions in our heads about our first impressions of the people we meet. Our parents whisper in our ears at grocery stores, ‘don’t be like child’ or ‘he looks homeless with his poor choice of clothing’, drilling into our minds to take every puzzle piece that every person entails and to construct the picture from a handful out of 500 pieces.
Years of judgement and labels suffocated who I wanted to be. Snark remarks and comebacks lingered in my dreams. Every display of something worthy, I absorbed and observed everything like a sponge. I changed myself, tailoring myself to be the mannequin; the common mold that everyone adored. And as years went by, my true individualism deteriorated, just like every persons’ who was susceptible to the negativity that encompassed their lives for years, sometimes decades on end.
But stand up. Have a break through. Do what you want. Strive to be better. Dress in what you feel makes you happy. Say things that you want to say. Surround yourself with people you want to be around. Be that individual who is whispered about in the grocery, so what? Be you, be yourself. The captured beauty of the whole puzzle is irrelevant compared to the attempts that others make of you, with their flimsy renditions.
Today, I walked into the coffee shop at the corner of my coffee-shop. Sweeping over the menu as I do everyday, I stared at my daily choice of beverage. Black drip with double shot of espresso, largest size. Sleep Deprived. Social Loser. Book Worm. Nerd.
But I kept staring, the voices ringing in my head, placing me into the rut that society had dug out for me, but I didn’t jump in. I didn't surrender. I looked my barista dead in the eye and asked for: extra sugar, please.