The Year I Met You Read Free

wouldn’t have visited them as much, or met their children, and everything eventually relates back to the fact that I have no work. I’m now the girl that friends call when they are at their wits’ end, with their hair like an oil slick on their head, reeking of body odour and baby vomit, when they say down the phone in a low hushed voice that gives me goosebumps that they are afraid of what they will do, so that I run to hold the baby while they have their ten-minute shower. I’ve learned that a ten-minute shower and the gift of going to the toilet without a ticking clock restores much more in new parents than personal hygiene.
    I spontaneously call my sister, which I was never able to do before. This has confused her immensely and when I’m with her she constantly asks what time it is, as if I’ve upset her body clock. I Christmas-shopped with time to spare. I bought actual Christmas cards and posted them on time – all two hundred of them. I even took over my dad’s shopping list. I am ultra-efficient, always have been. Of course I can be idle – I love a two-week holiday, I love to lie on the beach and do nothing – but only when I say so, on my terms, when I know I have something waiting for me afterwards. When the holiday is over, I need a goal. I need an objective. I need a challenge. I need a purpose. I need to contribute. I need to do something.
    I loved my job, but to make myself feel better about not being able to work there any more, I try to focus on what I won’t miss.
    I worked mainly with men. Most of the men were cocks, some were amusing, a few were pleasant. I did not like to spend any hours outside of work with any of them, which might mean my next sentence doesn’t make sense, but it does. Of the team of ten, I slept with three. Of the three, I regret sleeping with two; the one I don’t regret sleeping with strongly regrets sleeping with me. This is unfortunate.
    I will not miss people at work. People are what bother me most in life. It bothers me that so many lack common sense, that their opinions can be so biased and backward, so utterly frustrating, misguided, misinformed and dangerous that I can’t stand to listen to them. I’m not pointlessly prickly. I like non-PC jokes in controlled environments where it is appropriate and when it is obvious that the joke is at the expense of the ignorant who say such things. When a non-PC punchline is delivered by someone who genuinely believes it to be true, it is not funny, it is offensive. I don’t enjoy a good debate about what’s supposedly right and wrong; I would rather everyone just knew it, from the moment they’re born. A heel-prick test and a jab of cop-on.
    Not having my job has made me face what I dislike most about the world, and about myself. In my job I could hide, I could be distracted. Without a job, I have to face things, think about things, question things, find a way to actually deal with things that I have been avoiding for a long time. This includes the neighbourhood that I moved into four years ago and had nothing to do with until now.
    It also includes what happens at night: I’m not sure whether I somehow managed to ignore it before, whether it has escalated, or whether my idleness has led to me become fascinated, almost obsessed by it. But it is ten p.m. and it is a few hours away from my nightly distraction.
    It is New Year’s Eve. For the first time ever, I am alone. I have chosen to do this for a few reasons: firstly, the weather is so awful I couldn’t bring myself to go out in it after almost being decapitated by the door when I’d opened it to collect my Thai takeaway from the brave man who had battled the elements to deliver my food. The prawn crackers had practically dissolved and he’d spilled my dumpling sauce in the bottom of the bag, but I didn’t have it in my heart to complain. His long forlorn look past my front door and into the safety and warmth of my house stopped me from mentioning the state of