Black coffee, no sugar

I didn’t always drink my coffee this way.

There was a time I needed it sweet — two sugars, sometimes three. I convinced myself I liked it that way. It masked the bitterness, softened the edges. It was easier to sip. Easier to swallow. Easier to pretend it tasted good.

That’s how I liked my life, too: Sweetened. Filtered. Sugarcoated.

In my twenties, I mistook agreeableness for peace. I said yes when I meant no. I showed up to things I didn’t want to attend, smiled at people I barely trusted, held my tongue when something inside me was screaming. I became good at filtering myself — I thought that was what kindness looked like. Clean. Palatable. No sharp aftertaste.

But kindness without truth eventually grows heavy.

I once stayed in a relationship a year longer than I should have. We weren’t hurting each other, not in the ways that show. But we also weren’t being honest. We reassured each other when we should have asked the hard questions. We smiled for photos, said nice things, went on nice dinners, played the parts we had learned to play. It looked like sweetness from the outside. It left me tired on the inside.

It ended in 2015. In UST. We were seated at a café we used to love — her fingers wrapped around her usual caramel latte, mine around a plain black Americano. If I remember it right, that was the first time I ordered that drink. She looked at my cup and laughed. “You’ve changed,” she said.

I wasn’t sure if she meant the coffee or the fact that, for the first time, I had said no when she asked if I still wanted to try again. But I knew she was right. Something had shifted. And for the first time, I thought, maybe change wasn’t such a bad idea after all.

I started saying no, not to be difficult, but to be real. I stopped offering softened versions of what I meant. I learned to let silence hang when I didn’t have the words yet. I stopped explaining decisions to people who were never really listening. I stopped performing warmth for the sake of being understood.

Like every first, it was difficult, to the point that it felt like grief. You don’t realize how much of your life has been shaped around the expectations of others until you begin the slow, patient work of unbecoming. There were days I worried I had lost my softness. Days I rewrote messages over and over, afraid I had been too sharp. Days I mourned the version of me who never made anyone uncomfortable until I remembered how often that same version made me uncomfortable just to keep the peace.

Truth, by its nature, disturbs. It scrapes away illusion. It invites discomfort. But it also clears the fog. Sometimes the truth means telling a friend that the version of your friendship you once loved no longer feels like home. Sometimes it means walking away from a job that pays well but slowly empties your spirit. Sometimes it’s simply saying, “I’m not okay,” on a day when everyone expects you to smile.

It doesn’t always come with clarity. It rarely feels heroic. It just feels real. And that, I’ve learned, is enough.

These days, I drink my coffee in the mornings before anyone else is awake. The apartment is still. The city has not begun its rhythm. I sit by the window, holding a warm mug in both hands, letting the silence do its quiet work. No sugar. No cream. Just heat and sharpness and depth.

It is a small ritual. But it reminds me of the life I now choose daily.

A life that no longer needs to taste good in order to be good.

That is the gift of growing up — realizing that not everything has to be sweetened. Not every truth needs a bow. Not every moment requires a takeaway. Sometimes it’s enough to say, “This is where I am,” and let that be the whole point.

Because the truth — like black coffee — doesn’t beg to be liked. It stands on its own. And if you sit with it long enough, if you resist the urge to sweeten or further dilute, you’ll find something steady beneath the sting, buried under the dregs of it all. Something honest. Something grounding.

I write this now with the same black coffee beside me. No sugar. No cream.

The taste is the same.

But I don’t wince anymore after the first sip.

Bitterness is a flavor, too.

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Ivan Jeff C. Soberano is an engineer, educator and entrepeneur. He writes about growth, grit and the quiet moments that shape us. This is his latest piece for DAILY TRIBUNE.