At midnight, Simon texted, merry christmas, hope you’re having a better night than this guy, attaching a picture of one of his young cousins covered in gravy and crying, hard. I looked at the message on my phone and the pictures on my laptop and could not muster anything better than a haha yeah. I couldn’t tell what he was looking for and didn’t have the energy to figure it out.
I spent Boxing Day on my mother’s sofa, playing board games and eating hot turkey sandwiches with Hannah. My mother was seeing someone—a friendly but nervous man called Jeff who had dropped in for lunch and was now trying a bit too hard to make us like him. When he left the room, promising to return with hot chocolate like we’d never had, Hannah leaned over and whispered, “Does he think we’re going to try to Parent Trap her back with Dad or something? Aren’t we all a bit old for this?”
Ed came in and squeezed her waist. They hadn’t said anything to me, but at Linda’s place I’d overheard Ed tell Auntie Sara that they’d started trying for a baby. I was happy for them and excited about this next step in their lives together, though I was humiliated by their tact, which was also their pity. I imagined Hannah hiding her pregnancy like they did on TV, the two of them holding an increasingly improbable series of tote bags and hat boxes in front of her abdomen at all times, desperate to conceal from me that other people had happy, meaningful lives, full of milestones I would never achieve. My sister snuggled her feet under me and asked what I was up to these days. I rolled away, pulling the blanket tighter around my head, to hide her from my peripheral vision.
The next day I took the train back to Toronto, crawled into bed, and stayed there for days, rewatching casually misogynist old sitcoms and reality shows about beautiful people getting out of and back into emotionally abusive relationships. The period between Christmas and New Year’s always feels long, but this year it had taken a sedative. Time was moving even more sluggishly than usual, and I had been doing reckless things: double and triple delivery days where all my meals were takeout I couldn’t afford, biking in the snow with no lights or helmet, sending risky texts riddled with typos.
On December 28, I texted Simon, wyh do you like me.
He wrote back the next day: off the top of my head? you’re beautiful and you make me laugh.
I thought, fuck off.
I texted, fuck off, adding: men don’t care if women are funny. i think they actively dislike it.
ok, he wrote, you’re beautiful and i find you dull, which is exciting because it does not threaten me.
Three hours later, when I had not replied, he texted, . . . i was kidding.
I tapped the message so a little thumbs-up appeared and went back to bed.
Suddenly, and against my will, it was December 31. I woke up and thought, no. I texted the group chat that I wasn’t up for a big New Year’s thing. They were understanding if a bit icy. you don’t have to stay if you hate it, Amirah wrote, adding that I could borrow something from her if I needed an outfit. （Smaller friends were always promising to lend me beautiful clothes that wouldn’t fit in a million years.）
Clive said the guys hosting the party had promised an “all dips buffet” and heated backyard experience. I said I knew it would be fun, but that I also had a 700 percent chance of crying at midnight and wanted to do it alone. do what you want, Lauren wrote back. but next year it will be twenty-fucking-twenty and mark's inflatable hot tub will almost certainly be broken.
Simon texted to say he would be spending the countdown with friends at the Horseshoe Tavern, watching a cover band play one song from each year starting in 1919. He was, however, available after midnight, to start the new year with a bang （sex）。 I told him that sounded lovely, but I was doing my own thing and offered to meet him for brunch the next day. He wrote back, as you wish. I couldn’t tell if he was making a Princess Bride reference or just talked like that.
So: a solo New Year’s Eve, my first ever. I went to the fancy grocery store and picked up some supplies: blood oranges, calla lilies, herbal tea, and a candle with base notes of vetiver and “library.”
Everyone else at the store was picking up last-minute party offerings: boxes of leftover holiday chocolate, pre-made cheese and meat platters, nine limes. My reservations about spending this popular group-kissing holiday alone melted into a feeling of gentle superiority: I was not even going to get drunk tonight. I was going to exfoliate and set intentions.
While browsing the aisles, I was overcome with a desire to create, to have something to show for myself, and decided after a quick search to purchase the ingredients for a beginner-friendly bread recipe I found on 6Bites. I had never made bread before, but it seemed like it would be fulfilling to occupy my hands, to work basic ingredients into something nourishing with only time and effort. Plus I thought it would be nice if the apartment smelled like bread.
I walked home at a clip, my breath forming satisfying little clouds ahead of me. The sky was pink and the air was cold, and people were rushing around full of purpose. I felt proud of myself for accepting my limits: Christmas had been okay, but I didn’t want to spend tonight surrounded by happy couples and groups of people excitedly flirting in sparkly outfits all sharing sloppy midnight smooches. I didn’t want to have to tell anyone that my New Year’s resolutions were to cry less, figure out if I liked being outdoors, and experiment with breakfast salads. A night in was exactly what I needed.
I got home, unpacked my groceries, and changed into my most sophisticated/least dirty pajamas. I put my phone in a bowl with a plate on top of it, like I was trapping a spider. I boiled some water for tea （“a soothing blend of herbs for women”） and took out flour, salt, olive oil, and fast-acting yeast. I looked around for a measuring cup. The best I could do was a branded plastic wineglass from a music festival with 150 ml and 250 ml marked on the side.
I mixed my ingredients and rolled the resultant dough into a ball, channeling an aging celebrity baker I sometimes masturbated about. I kneaded my bread ball and left it under a dishcloth to rise. I went into the bathroom and lit my library candle. I filled the tub with Epsom salts, essential oils, and a few dusty petals from a drugstore bouquet that had been moldering in the corner of my bedroom for three weeks, why not. I put on a playlist called “Relaxing Piano” and ate a clementine, naked. I looked at my body in the mirror and thought, you know what, fine.
I lay in the tub for what felt like hours, semi-successfully clearing my mind. As my fingers started to prune, a timer went off in the kitchen, and I ran dripping through the apartment to check on my dough. It was much larger than I’d left it—a result. I put my new, larger dough ball on a baking sheet, covered that with a clean cloth, and left it alone again. I had some slightly basic thoughts about “being left alone to rise.”
After mopping up the wet patches I’d left around the kitchen, I went back to the bathroom and moisturized myself into oblivion. I was slicker than a baby seal, oilier than the bowl I’d put the bread in. I shone. I also couldn’t touch anything without leaving it streaked in residue. I wandered around the apartment, avoiding skin contact with any of my possessions and waiting—for my dough to proof, for my body to dry, for a sense of peace and personal empowerment to wash over me. The drying took longer than expected, and the empowerment, if it planned to arrive at all, was slow going too.