Although I am usually very conscious of when things happened, I was quite surprised when I saw Facebook saying that a status I wrote in 2015 was ten years ago. Of course, I shouldn’t be surprised at it, because it’s obvious, but it feels especially strange to look back at that year, because it felt very much like I was in a kind of ‘future’ year – not because it’s literally the year of the future in Back to the Future Part 2, but because I felt disconnected from what I felt was the ‘main’ part of my life, and that I was just withering away in a weird ‘future’ year.
In early 2014, I was very happy indeed as I was doing well at university and had cultivated a decent circle of close friends. Sadly, upon leaving university it was a lot harder to find work as a writer than I had anticipated, so I had no money at all – I even had to go to the Job Centre each week, losing money every time because they never factored in that I had to pay a bus fare to get there. Many of my closest university friends were no longer around anyway and most school friends had long-since moved, so even if I could afford to visit friends (which I couldn’t) I’d still have had a mostly empty social life. After going for months and months with so little social interaction, I’d almost started to think that I had lost the ability to make friends – or even that I was mistaken in the belief that I ever might have had it before. By 2015, I felt worn thin, and the death of the old family dog didn’t make things any easier.
However, while that was easily the lowest point of my life, in retrospect I can see that it was the year in which unknowingly I planted the seeds for the life I have now. If I wanted to be hyperbolic, I could say that it all stemmed from me writing a blog post titled Trusty Water Bottle. It’s a slightly silly piece of writing, but one that reflected my wistfulness at the time – I talk about how my Trusty Water Bottle (the very bottle this blog is named after) was a constant friend, and at least I still had it, even if my friends moved away. It was intentionally kind of funny, and as it happens, the boss at a writing job that I applied for happened to think the same thing (specifically bringing it up as a good piece of writing in my interview) and I ended up getting the job.
That felt like a pretty cool development. I was working full-time as a writer and that was validating. The pay was extremely low and I was still very lonely, but it was a step in the right direction – and actually, that little extra bit of money made it possible for me to start re-building a life for myself to some extent. Now that I could afford to see friends, it was time to re-connect with people who had been very important to me during my school days. Prior to that, I’d always been a bit anxious that people from the past wouldn’t be happy to hear from me, but at that point, I didn’t think I had much to lose.
The two people that I reached out to during that time were my friends Hayley and Ben. Both had been among my very best friends a few years previously, and the dinners I had with them were lovely – two of the highlights of the year. I started to feel like I was myself again to some extent, rather than some kind of husk, and it was nice to see that they seemed to enjoy reuniting with me as much as I enjoyed reuniting with them. Today, the pair of them make up one of the corner stones of my social life, and I’ll see both of them several times throughout the year, so I’m very glad I decided to reach back out to them, as the current landscape of my life would be a little sadder without them.
As the Christmas season approached, I knew that my fixed-term job would likely not last much longer, but I was determined to enjoy the festivities while I could and I’d worry about being back to square one later. One of the thing I decided to do was to book a trip to London to pay a visit to my friend Mairi.
I had an absolutely delightful time when I did. Mairi and I visited Winter Wonderland and had dinner in a delicious Nando’s. Once again, I felt like I was re-connecting with who I’d been before when I went to see Mairi – and funnily enough, as we’d started out as internet friends seven years earlier, it as actually only the sixth time that we’d spent any time together. I think this fact fed into it being a particularly healing experience for me though. We had fun, joked around, and talked somewhat deeply about life in a comfortable and familiar way. During that time, I felt valued and appreciated. I thought, if I can maintain such a strong connection with a person I’ve only seen face to face a handful of times, then perhaps I shouldn’t be so pessimistic about my chances of forming meaningful friendships again in the future?
Around the same time, I also got myself another writing job. Turns out it was kind of rubbish, but it was as stepping stone alone the way, and as it happens, it was in this job that I met somebody named Sarah. I didn’t know it then, but in the years that followed, she’d quickly cement herself as one of the greatest friends I’d ever have and is literally responsible for my continued presence in the world after driving me to the hospital in 2020.
I had another delightful couple of days with two Christmas meals that I arranged, both of which gave me a chance to reunite with several old friends, including many who didn’t live in the area anymore. Perhaps most notably, my good friend Eilidh came along after I’d been semi-estranged from her for most of 2014 and 2015. It was delightful to see her again – and today we’re in our sixth consecutive year of living together, so that worked out well.
Between Christmas and New Year, I went to visit Oscar (one of the very best friends I’d made in university) in Bristol. At this point, I feel like it’s worth mentioning that Oscar and also dear old Chloe were the two most consistent friends I had at that point and though I could barely afford to see anyone, if I did, it would be with either or both of them and I was and am very grateful for that. Through Chloe, I even got to consolidate a solid relationship with her partner Liam – and he’s the one who bought me the domain of this website!
After having a day in Bristol with Oscar, I was back in Bath. It was dark and it was cold, and I had a long wait until my bus home to Corsham. I was wandering around the places I’d gone with different friends before, and thinking about how lonely it seemed now. As much as I’d had some good times over Christmas, the post-yuletide depression was kicking in and I thought I was likely to have another year of the same.
As I wandered around Bath that night, I thought to myself “Hey, maybe one day you’ll end up being friends with your colleague, Sarah, and that’ll be one more friendly face in Bath”. Looking back, that’s kind of a weird thought, because I don’t typically think that after meeting people, and I guess it was strangely cognizant too, since not only did I become very close with Sarah in 2016, but also with her partner Edward.
It’s comforting to think that even in the lowest point of my life so far, the seeds for better times ahead had been planted. Ben and Hayley were the first of many old friends that I’d re-forge my bond with in the years ahead. My first tentative writing jobs would pave the way for what’s actually been a much more lucrative career than I’d ever have imagined. Mairi gave me a revitalised sense of self-confidence, which helped me in making new friends in the years ahead, and I often think about how I randomly thought about Sarah when I was wandering around Bath that night, as it’s a warming reminder that you never know when a new person might go on to become one of the most important people in your life – meanwhile, when I look at my relationship with Eilidh at that point, and think about how I wasn’t sure that we’d even get back in touch, let alone live together one day, and it just goes to show that you never know when friendships will come back and be stronger than ever.
Ultimately, I was very lucky. Things fell into place perfectly and thanks to the love of good friends, I’m now living a life that I am perfectly happy and contented with – but I look back to 2015 and I think that it could just as easily have been the turning point that sent me down the path of becoming a mean and bitter person. I’m glad that, unbeknownst to me, the seeds of happiness were growing quite rapidly.



