The grocery store cashier asked if I was okay, I laughed it off, then cried in the car

Last Tuesday I stopped by the Safeway on 5th Ave to grab a frozen pizza and some toilet paper, nothing special. The cashier, this older lady with a name tag that said Deb, looked at me and said, 'You seem tired, sweetheart, everything alright?' I gave her this big fake smile and said, 'Oh yeah, just busy!' but the truth was I had gotten laid off at 9am that morning and hadn't told anyone yet. I paid, walked out, sat in my car for 20 minutes and just lost it, not because of the job but because her noticing felt worse than the actual news. Why is it so much easier to lie to a stranger than to admit you're falling apart? Has anyone else had a random person see through the act and it just wrecked you?

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1 Comment

the_alice28d ago

You said 'her noticing felt worse than the actual news,' but I think that's the thing, you weren't crying about the job, you were crying because someone finally saw you. That's not worse, that's just the part that hits different.