2020’s final gift was waking up to a black eye I don’t know how I got. Just straight up sucker-punched, by life, or maybe by myself, no opportunity to beg or bargain. Poetic, really. I got up to go to the bathroom in the morning and caught myself in the mirror and thought What the fuck, did I put on makeup last night? Oh fuck.

The wow, you are not fixing this gave way to the how the hell did this happen? and I noticed the pools of, for what it’s worth, weirdly lilac blood that made me originally think I had done some somnambulant 1980s eyeshadow tutorial, matched suspiciously with the frame of my glasses.

I am a dutiful glasses taker-offer. But, I had been watching Love Island and the villa had just been rocked by the news Jessica, having been dumped in the prior episode, had forsaken the covenant of the Hideaway and her island boyfriend Dom and immediately shacked up with some commoner. Dom, an adult man, had been deliriously excited about seeing her boobs, so it was hard not to feel for the guy despite the ridiculousness of actually honoring a three day reality TV relationship.

But I’ll be damned if he didn’t keep lulling me to sleep with his delightful accent and stiff upper lip response to getting mugged off. I started the same episode three or four nights in a row, but couldn’t get more than 20 minutes in without succumbing to his lad siren song.

The flaw, however, I watched Dom get pied off multiple nights, but only woke up with a black eye once.

So I went to the doctor, he’s examining my eye. I wore my glasses, and he is in support of the sleeping on my face theory. I try to let go that I’ll probably never know what weird nocturnal maneuvering I did on this particular night to weaponize a pair of Oliver Peoples.

Then he tilts my chin up, looks closely at my eye and says, “what is this, a week old?” I tell him no, it’s from last night

“No, there’s yellowing to this bruise, you must have done this to yourself multiple times.”

and I thought, fuck you Jessica, you thirsty slut.