by Rebecca Betty

You know that moment that every brilliant person talks about? Their “epiphany moment”? They write books to tell about it, go on talk shows to talk about it, and stay up late at night smiling just from thinking about it. Well, I found my epiphany moment to be quite different. After it hit me, I sat alone for two hours crying in a café. It wasn’t even a very nice café.

After I finished crying into my latte, I dropped a tip on the table and stumbled out into the street. No flashing cameras, no book deals, no one waiting to shake my hand. So I walked on. My eyes still burned a little and I wondered if I’d smudged my eyeliner. For some reason I felt this was both incredibly important and completely meaningless. Just like attachments to fictional characters and my college degree, having perfect eyeliner was simultaneously highly significant and utterly inconsequential.