“I stopped telling people at parties what I do. It is easier to say I am between things.”

Eight months. Around a hundred and fifty applications, though I stopped keeping the spreadsheet properly somewhere in month five, which tells you something.

I stopped telling people at parties what I do. It is easier to say I am between things and watch them decide whether to ask a second question. Most do not.

My partner has started answering for me, which I hate and am grateful for at the same time. She says it lightly, like it is nothing, and then we drive home quiet.

The money is not the emergency yet. The thing that has gone is the part of me that assumed I would be fine. I keep waiting for it to come back and it has not.