scallop time

07.29.2026

Spotted Zebra is a little New American place right by ACC HQ. It's on the first floor of that Mariott right across the street from ATR. Given the sheer number of times I’ve ordered their Creamy Old Bay Shrimp Pasta, I think Spotted Zebra deserves a post. There's nothing like forkfuls of saucy torchio and pieces of fat, warm shrimp after a long day of packing boxes at ACC. The picture is from last Friday, the same day I panicked over not having sent the biggest merch item to a conference in Cincinnati and literally ran to UPS with my 25-pound box after dropping 900 bucks to get it sent via overnight shipping. COBSP probably tasted better as a result.

I like eating alone because I don’t have to focus on two things (e.g. shrimp and conversation) at once, but I’m fine with reading while eating because it lets me set the pace of the conversation (between the writer and myself). Reading works because the writer doesn’t expect me to respond. Given everything, I would have read A Grief Observed, but I had read it too many times to feel anything new. So I opted for Li’s Things in Nature Merely Grow, where I came across that famous line from Richard II:

To think our former state a happy dream:
From which awaked, the truth of what we are
Shows us but this: I am sworn, brother, sweet, 
To grim necessity.

It’s the dying king’s farewell to his queen. Aside from its pathos, there is a deeply comforting truth about what he says, which is that there is nothing left to do. Death is a necessity. For the queen, the loss of her lover is a necessity. It has to happen, and there is nothing she can do to stop it. It is a necessity.

I knew that my own necessity would be “grim,” but I didn’t really know what to expect other than to feel sad. Turns out, "sadness" comes in many different shapes and sizes, depending on the reason for it and the circumstances surrounding my experience of it. Emily said “this isn’t your first rodeo,” but I only partially agree. I think every heartbreak is a novel experience. So while I knew I’d be sad and that the sadness would wear off over time, I had, and am still having, a hard time pinpointing the reasons for the different kinds of sadnesses I feel. An obvious one is a sense of loss. But loss of what? Here is a rough draft:

1. 1. The loss of a friend - of being known, cared for, talked to, heard by someone
   2. The loss of a romantic interest - of being able to interact with and express my affections to the object of my desire who also made me the object of his desire
   3. The loss of happy expectations - of plans made, futures discussed (and some not discussed, like the formal, graduation, military, etc.)

But there are other reasons as well, such as the feeling of remorse, or the feeling of never being able to see and interact with the object of my desire again. The confusing part is that I have little grasp over the sequence or intensity of these reasons. Sometimes, I feel sad out of a sense of loss. Other times, I feel sad because I’m sorry that I had hurt the object of my desire. Sometimes, it’s both, and both are equally intense. Other times, I only feel one, but another reason still lingers in the form of a quieter awareness.

In the midst of this uncertainty, one thing is certain, which is that this just is a necessity. A grim one, but inevitable nonetheless. It’s not a necessity in the sense that I am not responsible for its unfolding. I most certainly am. It is a necessity in the sense that what’s been done is done. There is nothing I can do at this point in time to stop or undo anything.

Our former state, then, really was just a dream. A happy one, but transient nonetheless—to be happy was to be in love; to be in love was to grow to care for the boy; to care for the boy was to bring the relationship to an end; to bring the relationship to an end was to end the dream. It hurts, but I have yet to find a reason to blame God for the hurt because I remember the good times too fondly for the bad times to overshadow them. Yes, it hurts now, but the sweetness of the “happy dream” makes me too grateful to be upset at the Almighty who ordained both the happy dream and the grim necessity. In fact, the loss of the boy makes me ever so grateful for the times when I had him. He was never mine to begin with, and I had done nothing to deserve a friendship like that. Yet God, in his kindness, decided to lend him to me for a brief period of time, and that same God, in his good sovereignty, decided to take him away. He had every right to do so, and I have every obligation to surrender and obey. So I’m trying. And this realization makes it easier. I don’t have it in me to hate the one who lent me this great big thing that I never even deserved in the first place. So I’m sad and in love and infinitely grateful for what I had, all at once. I’m also very very hungry, which is why I keep returning to Spotted Zebra to stuff my face with shrimp. Yum.