A cup of tea made by another’s hands really is really a brew of disappointment and lies.

Yesterday a friend of mine made a Facebook post about a fear of a poorly-made cup of tea and I practically commented a fucking novel in support for this claim. Because while people tell themselves that they’re doing you a favour by fixing you a cup of love, in reality they’re constructing a no win situation for the drinker. That’s right, I’m turning making someone a comforting drink into a punch to the breast.

I never really understood my mother, who would get incredibly stressed when people did things for her. As a bright-eyed and horrendously chubby child, I was shocked to find that my mother didn’t react to me and my siblings’ offering of breakfast in bed of a Mothers’ Day like the women on the Suzannes ads did. Instead of waking up with perfect hair, unwrinkled pyjamas and a warm, loving embrace for the sheer perfections of human beings she brewed up in her woman cave, all we got were disgruntled sighs. I used to think it was because she was a heartless grump who scoffs at the selfless gestures of her love-starved offspring. But today I understand completely. What I now realise is that not only would we have left the kitchen in a mess and woken her up early with our toaster-getting-out-of-the-cupboard noises and poorly-hushed disagreements, the end result was about as underwhelming as opening a bottle of liquid whiteout. Tepid tea, smears of butter on all utensils and some form of toasted bread or pancakes which we never saw Mum eat for breakfast but were repeatedly told by Target catalogues that she would love so much her ovaries would swell to the size of medium grapefruits. If I were to see that little jerk of a human being putting someone through that and expecting a hug to the soundtrack of various versions of It Must Be Love, I would probably slap myself across the face. Mum doesn’t like crumbs in her bed. Mum doesn’t like unnecessary washing up. And she sure as shit won’t stand for a badly-made, lukewarm cup of tea. She didn’t overcome polio for a big old cup of disappointment, for fuck’s sake.

While my mother may sound like a cold, heartless diva (she isn’t, by the way. She still bakes slices and fruitcake for my old work colleagues, does meals on wheels and sends me Happy Unbirthday cards using the free stationary she was given as a gift for donating money to weirdly-specific charities) I think she was right to be disgruntled. Because the only thing worse than a shit cup of tea is having to feign gratitude to the evil creature who made it for you.

As much as I enjoy the thought of someone dedicating five minutes of their life purely for the satisfaction of my needs (hashtag relationship goals), that’s pretty much where it stops for me. Because no matter how many times someone tries to brew you a cuppa, it’s never going to be quite right. I’ve been through some stuff. I’ve experienced the highs and lows of life. I’ve stared at landscapes through public transport windows with a pensive look on my face; I’ve been on a journey to myself and know who I am. So don’t just assume that you know how much milk I want in my fucking tea. You’ll never get me. When Britney Spears’ backup singers sang “you’ve just got to do it your way” in Overprotected (wow, two Britney references in two weeks) I’m pretty sure they were envisaging me, sassily pouring boiling water over a teabag in the mug I always fucking use.

It’s for this reason (and the fact that I am apparently so full of hate my pimples are actually clogged with viscous distain) that I try to avoid making a cup of tea for someone else. Because I’m either serving them a steaming hot cup of I-have-no-idea-who-you-are-as-a-person or forcing my view of the world onto someone and trying to make them conform to my standards. If I want to dismiss all regard for a person’s worth or shape them into a mediocre version of me, I’ll usually do that with my words, not a beverage.

Inevitably someone will add too much sugar, not let the tea steep for as long, go too hard on the milk or assume you like some kind of wanky brew that doesn’t have a name, just an affect labelled in wispy letters over a adjective-laden ingredient list – such as “calming”, “energising” or “suddenly forgetting your life is a pathetic waste of resources because of these organic cranberry flakes”. If you think that literally condensing a person in a standard-sized mug is tricky, then doing it metaphorically is all kinds of impossible. Just like only you can decide if Blurred Lines actually offends you, only you can know how to make your tea.

We all know this, but are regularly cornered in a situation in which it’s good manners to take the cup of tea. You tell yourself how nice it is that you get to set comfortably in the couch while the kind soul fixes you a drink, but that’s just what they want. They lull you into an acceptance of their offer with your warm memories of tea you made yourself and then they piss all over it. They slap a teabag in, slosh around an unmeasured amount of water, dump in a non-descript sweetener and present you with a mug of insults. But they don’t just hand you the cup of tea and leave you be, they expect conversation and gratification. As if drinking the lukewarm piss of Satan isn’t bad enough, now this sadist wants to share things about their life with you and expects you to nod earnestly between over enthusiastic sips of gratitude. It’s kind of like when a lass is bought a drink at Da Clubz and is therefore expected to reciprocate with sexual rubbing of some degree, only instead of a watered down cheap vodka and raspberry you’re given watered down dreams and what’s being violently shoved down your throat is some dribble about their douchebag partner/frivolously pointless university to degree/vague career aspirations to set up a fashion brand in Bali/yoga. As in both situations, you can’t help but wonder how you, as the proud owner of a supposedly fully-formed brain, find yourself in such positions. But despite all your discomfort you grin and bare it, hoping that at least an offer of a sandwich will follow and make everything worth it.

Unfortunately, that sandwich rarely comes.