The Other Side of the Door
The best defense against being judged? Beat them to it.
Have you ever made up a story in your head about what’s waiting on the other side of a door? I’ve been doing it since I was a kid. Crafting entire movie scenes before I even grabbed the handle.
If I caught someone looking at me from across the room, I knew something was up. Was it my hair? My clothes? Or maybe they are making fun of how I talk. Or the way I moved my hand that made my wrist look limp. You know what that means!
The only way I knew to keep from getting hurt, was to make up my own version about them first. It was a constant loop, never ending, never quiet.
So there I was, parked in front of a coffee shop in Mitchell, South Dakota, talking myself out of going in.
Chase, my rat terrier co-pilot, and I were headed back to Portland from Minnesota. We’d found a farm to park our trailer for the night through Harvest Host.
The owners were kind, they owned a local bistro called The Bread and Vine, and they’d invited us in for breakfast before we hit the road.
Naturally, I Googled it first. The menu looked great, but then I saw it: “Christian Casual Coffee Shop.”
Seeing that word, you know the one, always makes me stop for a split second. Seeing a business that includes it in their marketing raises flags. Big. Red. “You’re not welcome here” flags.
That’s not coming from a place of ignorance. It’s coming from a place of experience. I was raised Christian. But when I came out in the late 90’s, the church suddenly didn’t seem safe anymore. Instead it felt scary.
The feeling of rejection, of being excluded, it stayed with me for years. So when I see that word, used that way, in a coffee shop description on Google, I notice it. It’s code for “just keep moving buddy.”
But damnit, I was hungry! So instead of closing the tab and writing it off, I kept scrolling… a few more lines down, same listing said: LGBTQ+ friendly.
What, what? A business in Mitchell, South Dakota that leads with their faith, but leaves the light on for the gays? I nearly cried.
It got me to thinking about what I had just done. The story I invented to protect myself. It wasn’t the first time. I didn’t just wake up one day and start doing it.
When I was a young child, I was abused. And here’s the thing that I didn’t figure out until almost 50 years later.
When you’re that small, your parents are your entire world. If one of them hurts you, your brain doesn’t have the capacity to blame them. You need them to survive. So you blame yourself.
It must be me. I must be bad.
I got stuck in that “unworthy of love” cycle, and it stayed on repeat for decades. Eventually, it’s just easier to assume rejection is coming. You beat them to it by creating a reason why you never wanted anything from them anyway.
No rejection. No conflict. You may be a loser in life, but you’re going to win this time!
That voice was a constant, overlapping conversation. Combine that with my ADHD, which is less of a “distraction” and more like a permanent party in my head where I’m not the DJ, and being a closeted man until 30? I had every reason to assume I was being judged.
Sometimes I was. When the church tells you you’re broken, or you get fired for being gay, the “stories” in your head start to feel like facts.
That worthlessness leads to some dark places. For me, it led to a total mental health collapse.
It took two trips to Peru and sitting with Ayahuasca 24 times to finally hear what “quiet” actually sounds like.
In one of those ceremonies, I was taken back to a specific moment as a child. I was allowed to speak to my father, to finally forgive him, and more importantly, to forgive myself.
The next day was a miracle. It was the first time I can ever remember the negative chatter just... stopping. Sure the ADHD party was still going, but the guy who had been holding me down all those years had finally given me a well deserved break.
After that, I started to see qualities in myself I actually liked. I started to believe that I was someone who could be loved in return.
Which brings me back to the coffee shop.
I did go in. I never felt a single pair of eyes on me. No one was judging. In fact, no one was thinking about me at all. They were just drinking coffee.
The only person doing any judging that day was me, and I almost missed out on a delicious breakfast because of it.
Chase and I were on a walk the other morning and passed a young man going the other way. He looked miserable, angry and heavy. It reminded me of how I used to move through the world.
I see so many people now who seem to be carrying that same weight, obsessing over others who have zero interest in them. The real mean and angry ones seem to have been handed microphones and permission to be loud about it.
I wonder what would happen if, for just one day, their inner voice went quiet? What if they took a break from the labor of judging everyone they passed?
I think they’d be floored by how light they felt. I think they’d realize that the armor they’re wearing is actually what’s crushing them.
The hard part isn’t finding the quiet. It’s believing you finally deserve it.
—R. Michael
R. Michael is a former luxury yacht chef, a reluctant expert on billionaire behavior, and a reliable source of opinions nobody asked for. This is Ungarnished.
From the Archive
One story pulled from the shelf. These were written under a different name, on a different road. The ink is older, but the voice is the same.
THE BREAKDOWN | THE PERU CHRONICLES | PART 6
I went to Peru hoping Ayahuasca would save my life. The season finale is about the ceremony that showed me how to save it myself.
Good story. Keep writing!
I read what you write because you write about your real life. But in writing about that, you also write about foundational truth that affects all of us. Please, never stop writing.