I have "TEA"

So I’ve been hiding something from you guys. But maybe I let it sit too long and now the tea is lukewarm, room-temperature, the kind you drink only out of politeness.

It’s not the type of tea that’ll make you gasp or text your group chat in all caps. You’ll probably roll your eyes, chuckle for the sake of social decorum, and move on.

Because my tea is not real tea. It’s “third-time-used teabag with two drops of milk in a chipped mug” tea. The type that tastes like disappointment with a hint of tap water.

If you can’t handle my tea, leave. Maybe you’re a coffee person anyway. Or maybe you can’t handle the tiny details I hoard from every conversation like a squirrel storing gossip for winter.

Photo by Ahmed Hasan on Unsplash

In middle school I used to mentally file every scrap of tea I collected during the day, just so I could unload it all on my friend during our walk after school. I had categories. Color-coded ones. Pink tab for crush drama. Yellow for teacher scandals. Blue for things that weren’t actually tea but sounded important when whispered.

And when I had tea, it sat in my body like mentos in a can of coke. I couldn’t hold it. It would shoot out of me the second someone said “So what happened?”

Recently I’ve noticed this about myself. I’m naturally clumsy. I spill literal drinks all the time, but I really thought I could stop spilling the figurative stuff. Turns out, no. The lid is loose. The cup is cracked. The tea is escaping no matter what.

Maybe that’s the truth I’ve been avoiding:
I don’t spill tea because I’m messy. I spill tea because part of me wants to be heard.

Anyway. There it is. The tea.
And yes, I spilled it again.