A Year Ago

Today, I woke up to find that I slept in, and I was nearly half an hour late to work. My boss gave me my final warning - "If you're late again," she said firmly, "you'll no longer be able to work here."

I got my current grade for my Japanese class. There are thirty-six assignments, and my professor only has fourteen recorded. I'm failing.

I missed my multi-ethnic literature class on a day I needed to attend in order to get some information from my professor about my final paper...because I was busy squeezing out a six-page paper for my post-structuralism class.

I got frustrated at work later and snapped at one of my best friends and co-workers.

I took my Ethics of War & Peace test. The four questions I studied the hardest for, I got wrong.

On the way home, I was riding my bike in the dark and got clotheslined by a blackened chain that didn't appear in the road until I was a foot away. As I stumbled about searching for my glasses (they'd gone flying forward), I heard some onlookers laughing at me. I found my glasses - by stepping on them.

I got home to find that my Wendy's Frosty had spilled all over the rest of my dinner in the bag.

Tonight when I climbed into bed, I slowly closed my eyes, and everything about today came crashing down with more pain than any of the petty things I'd endured all day:

...On December 5, 2007, a year ago today, I met Erik for the first time.