u/Droit_Whinch

This started when I was nineteen. I went to a coffee shop with some people I wanted to impress and everyone ordered confidently and when it got to me I panicked and said "oh I don't really drink coffee" and ordered a juice. It worked fine. Nobody cared. I moved on.

Except then I said it again the next time. And the time after that. And at some point it stopped being a convenient excuse and became my entire personality on this topic. I am now a person who doesn't drink coffee. People know this about me. My family knows this. Multiple people have bought me tea as gifts because of this.

The actual truth is that I don't know what any of it means. What is a flat white. Why does the same drink have four different sizes with Italian names. What does "single origin" mean and why is it more expensive. Why does everyone at the counter look mildly disappointed when you don't know your exact order before you reach them. I don't know how to acquire this knowledge without revealing that I've been lying about it for over a decade.

Three weeks ago I was alone in an unfamiliar city, tired, and walked into a coffee shop out of desperation. I looked at the menu for a long time. I ordered something called an oat latte because it was the thing I'd heard other people order most. It was genuinely very good. I drank it in about four minutes.

I've been back to that same chain four more times. I tell nobody. I drink my coffee alone like a person with a secret. Which I am.

This is going to sound petty and I already know that. I want to say upfront that I love him and this is genuinely the only thing that bothers me about living together.

We moved in together about seven months ago. Things have been really good overall. We both work from home full time, him in tech, me in project management, and we share a two bedroom apartment where one room is sort of the "office room" and one is the bedroom. We usually both work from the office room during the day.

My boyfriend has a habit of narrating out loud while he works. Not talking to me, not on a call, just sort of commenting on what he's doing to himself but at an audible volume. Things like "okay, let's see what's going on here" and "alright, that's not right" and "hm. okay. interesting." Multiple times an hour. Sometimes a quiet little sound effect when something works.

Individually each comment is maybe two seconds. But it happens constantly throughout the day and I have started noticing it the way you notice a dripping tap. I work in a job that requires me to concentrate on written communication for long stretches and I keep losing my train of thought mid-sentence.

I haven't said anything yet because I genuinely don't know if this is a reasonable thing to ask someone to change. It's clearly an unconscious habit, he doesn't even seem aware he does it. And he works better when he's in the office room with me, he's said that himself. I don't want to make him feel self conscious about something he probably can't control.

But I also cannot lose my place in another email because someone murmured "hm interesting" at their screen.

Would I be wrong to bring it up?

PGY1, internal medicine, about three months in. Yesterday was the kind of shift where everything that could go slow did go slow. Not a disaster, just a grind. Lots of paperwork, one family who needed a lot of hand-holding through a difficult conversation, a consult that took two hours to get a response from. By 6pm I hadn't eaten since a granola bar at 7am and I was running on that specific kind of empty where you stop noticing you're hungry.

I was finishing up a note outside one of my patient's rooms, older gentleman, been with us four days, pretty straightforward case, very kind family that checked in every afternoon. His daughter comes out of the room, looks at me, and just says "have you eaten today." Not in a concerned way exactly. More like the way someone's mom asks it.

I said I was fine, just finishing up. She went back in the room. I kept typing.

Five minutes later she comes back out and hands me a paper bag. She said they had ordered too much food for lunch and thought I might want the extra sandwich. It was a turkey sandwich from the decent deli two blocks from the hospital, still wrapped, still cold from what I assume was her purse the whole afternoon.

I said thank you probably four times. She said I looked like I needed it and went back in to her dad.

I ate it standing in the hallway next to the supply cart. It was the best sandwich i have had in recent memory and I think it's mostly because of the context. I wrote a nicer than usual note for that patient that night. Not that it changes anything clinically. It just felt right.