Written by Madeleine Minks
Art by Julian Dindal
Friday, November 3rd started in the way many of my days do: with me calling my mom. I am what some might call a mama’s girl. We talk almost every day; I often call her in the morning while I’m getting ready and we tell each other our plans for the day. Today, I was telling her about my brilliant idea: I was going to go to Café HOT, a cafe on Main Street with a large, cheery sign I’d passed countless times on the way to Church Street with friends. She wished me luck, we said our goodbyes, and I continued applying my mascara while humming along to a Maisie Peters song. The universe is shifting and it’s all for me. Everything was going great.
Friday, November 3rd continued in the way many of my days do: with me calling my mom in a state of near panic.
“This was a terrible idea. I can’t do it,” I announced to her. Even as I said this, I stood there in my shoes and coat, my hand hovering inches away from my bag. I think I wanted her to talk me into going.
An important fact about me that I’ve neglected to mention so far: I have a severe anxiety disorder that, among other things, makes it incredibly difficult for me to go places by myself. This did not used to be the case (I used to get purposefully lost in the woods when I was a preteen), but ever since a particularly traumatic panic attack when I was 15, I’ve been unable to go on even short walks by myself. In the three and a half years that I’ve been at college, I have never set foot off of campus by myself.
Now, with the encouragement of my mom and a determination to prove that I’m more stubborn than anxious, I decided to do just that.
I could feel myself reeling, teetering on the edge of a cliff and on the verge of turning and running as far away from the edge as possible. I was also mad. Mad that my brain wanted me to back out of something that I had already set my mind to. So, with my mother still on the phone, I told myself to go outside. No matter what, the day would start with me leaving my room.
I reminded myself why the destination was ideal. One: it was about a ten minute walk from my dorm, a challenging but theoretically doable distance. Two: whenever I’d pass by, there were always a lot of people in there, both of which made me feel more comfortable and gave me more to witness. Three, and the most important: the food was supposed to be really good. Nothing motivates me better than really good food.
The walk itself, as is the same for every walk I go on, became like a game where you have to reach certain checkpoints. For the first couple of minutes, I didn’t even think of that, just focused on whatever my mom was saying and tried not to notice the distance I was covering. I was pleased when I realized I’d reached the end of the campus quad. Checkpoint one, passed.
As I started down Main Street, I began to experience something I wasn’t expecting: confidence. I was walking somewhere by myself, something that was easy for nearly everyone else my age, but for me was a monumental task. I continued down the hill, the fall breeze serving as a crisp reminder that I was here, doing this.
Originally, I had planned not to call my mom on the walk, as I figured that would be “cheating” since this was supposed to be a solo experience. Then I remembered that one: this was hard enough for me as is and if I didn’t keep talking to someone I would probably have a panic attack and never actually get to the cafe, and two: the rules for this were arbitrary and I could do what I want.
By the time I was approaching the end of the block–which was probably about 45 seconds but felt like an eternity–I was starting to get anxious. A master of subtlety, I decided to clue my mother into this.
“I’m starting to get anxious,” I declared, which wasn’t her problem at all, but she was gracious enough to offer reassurances.
“You’ve got this,” she encouraged me.
Then I was at the first of three crosswalks I needed to cross to get to the cafe. Checkpoint passed. Immediately after was another, longer crosswalk, which I crossed with my stomach half a step behind. At the sidewalk, my organs settled back into place and I continued onwards. Checkpoint passed. One more to go, and the cafe was in sight.
A few seconds after starting down the final stretch of my journey, I picked up a voice behind me that wasn’t my mother’s. I glanced behind me to see a man, seemingly drunk or drugged, yelling. Not at me–hopefully–but was, nonetheless, a man yelling. One of my least favorite things in the world. I picked up the pace.
Oddly, this made the journey easier. I was too busy being anxious about the guy behind me to worry as much about having a panic attack, keeling over and dying in the middle of the street. Guy Yelling On Sidewalk was a more material threat than my inner turmoil, so I walked as fast as my heeled boots (I wanted to look cute at the cafe, sue me) would take me. Crosswalk three: the final checkpoint. Passed. I’d made it.
“I’m here. I’ll call you later. Thank you. Yeah. Love you, bye.” I hung up and approached the door, a giddiness rising up in me. Through the glass window, I could see people absorbed in their drinks and conversations, their activity explained by the two signs hanging over the window: Café HOT, written in red on a long white sign. Two glass doors, one leading into a carpeted entryway and one leading into the actual cafe, separated me from my destination. I stepped through the first door, the sounds of cars and the drone of a crosswalk sign disappearing behind winter-stained glass. At that point, I was an observer, separate from the cafe’s ecosystem. As I stepped through the second door, though, I became a part of it.
An immediate warmth hit me as I entered the cafe. A stretch of carpet and a line divider ran down the floor directly in front of me, leading to the register. To my left was a counter with seating space and a little rack at the end with napkins and cup lids. To my right, partially separated from the counter and register by a half-wall, was the seating area, taking up about two-thirds of the cafe. There were two more small counter spaces and about a dozen wooden tables with black metal chairs, several of which were positioned in front of a long wooden bench spanning the entire right wall. The restrooms were near the back right corner of the restaurant, a door marked by an impressively large black velvet door knocker.
Later research informed me that Café HOT first opened its doors in September 2021, which was a huge surprise to me. Something about the way that the baristas, cashier and cooks worked seamlessly with each other, producing drinks or steaming hot sandwiches seemingly out of thin air, or the cohesive, diner-like aesthetic created with a red counter, yellow accents and a black-and-white floor, gave me the impression that this was a long-established restaurant; the huge number of happy customers also made it seem like a local favorite, something that, back in the Boston suburbs that I’m from, is usually reserved for restaurants that have been in business for at least a decade. While none of the cafes in Burlington had ever struck me as quiet, there was a livelihood to Café HOT that exceeded them; there were no computers visible and nearly everyone was engaged in a conversation.
I ordered the Number 8 Special, which was easily the best breakfast I’ve ever had in Burlington. It made that trek and all the anxiety brought with it all the more bearable. I sat on the long wooden bench, positioned in the center of the back wall. This gave me a good view of the entire dining area, which led to some people watching and unintentional eavesdropping. Everyone was there with someone else–though there may have been people like me eating at the bar on the other side of the half-wall. To my left were two twenty-somethings, presumably a couple, whose conversation filtered through my mind without any coherence like the adults in a Charlie Brown special. To the right of me was a group of three college students and an adult woman, who I assumed was one of their moms. Their conversation kept moving and curving, like a car on a winding road.
For most of my time there, I read while eating and sipping on my hot chocolate. The short story, “This is Heaven” by Nada Alic, followed a young couple that were attempting a meditation in order to “nourish” their marriage that, though neither of them seem to be aware of it, is very codependent. As I’ve never been in a relationship, it was easy for me to raise an eyebrow at the codependent nature of their marriage. As I got further into the story, however, the narrator explained that she relied on the security of her relationship in a world that is ever-changing. She finds herself staying in more–working remotely, spending her free time with her husband, and generally falling into a pattern of isolation. I grew uncomfortable at points from sheer relatability. I thought of my phone call with my mother, and how at the first twinge of fear, my instinct was to call her. I expected someone else to motivate me, instead of finding the strength to motivate myself. It was suddenly much harder to judge the woman in the story.
That relatability wasn’t the only source of discomfort during the hour I spent there. My general anxiety would ebb and flow, seemingly at random, as I fiddled with my sleeves and tried not to think about how far away my dorm was. It wasn’t very far at all, but in those moments, it felt like it was on the other side of a canyon. I did my best to put that stretch of canyon out of my mind, brute-forcing my way back into my reading headspace until the feeling went away.
After an hour and with only about a third of my hot chocolate remaining, I had finished the short story and decided to leave. I’d read another piece after it, but my thoughts kept returning to “This is Heaven.” I thought of the woman and her husband, stuck in their codependent world. It seemed so obvious to me; the solution to their problems was to get outside, exist somewhere else, make genuine human connections. If that was their solution, well, wasn’t it mine as well? My heart still swelling with a sense of accomplishment, I disposed of my trash, gathered my things, and returned to the counter once more.
“I just wanted to let you guys know that everything was amazing,” I told the cashier and bartender. They both smiled at me, and you could tell the cashier in particular was thrilled.
“Thank you so much, that really means a lot! See you next time!”
“Yeah! Thank you!” I exited the warmth of Café HOT and returned to the windy Burlington sidewalk, grinning beneath my mask. The cold sunny morning felt like an almost tangible thing around me, as if the sky itself were greeting me. I don’t believe in that sort of stuff; I suppose if I did, I never would have been where I was at that moment, because I wouldn’t be afraid of everything. In those following minutes, however, I felt a complete lack of fear. Instead was a lightness I wasn’t expecting from the experience, but had been chasing all the same. The universe is shifting, and it’s all for me.