My best friend has a friend - let’s call her Bee. We’ve never gotten on. Bee is overbearing and bossy and speaks about herself all the time. She’ll completely hog the conversation for the entire evening, and it’s all “me, me, me”. I don’t like her and avoided her. But this isn’t about her, it’s about her husband. Bee’s husband is a few years younger than her, but a lifetime younger mentally. Reader, he’s a twat. I knew this within hours of meeting him. He gets far too drunk and makes a total fool of himself. He makes inappropriate comments/suggestions to his wife’s female friends. He knows nothing, does nothing, and contributes nothing. He’s in his thirties and has gotten them into loads of debt buying Star Wars toys. Oh, did I mention they had a baby at the time? I couldn’t stand him. I pissed Bee off big time one night at a party when he was being an annoying twat and I was witheringly sarcastic to him in front of everyone. She never spoke to me for a couple of years after that - which was fine by me. Anyway, fast forward to today, and guess what? He has proved his twatness to the world! By dumping Bee for some woman (with 4 children and multiple ex-partners) he’d been speaking to on the internet for a fortnight and gotten pregnant twice! (It was a “false alarm” the first time apparently.) Bee found all of this out because the other woman (TOW) helpfully phoned her and told her they’d had sex in his car many many times - even the night before. Since then (August), TOW has thrown him out and taken him back five or six times; he’s been at Bee’s door at all hours begging for forgiveness more times than I care to remember; and he’s pressured Bee to let their child come and live with him and TOW because he thinks that would be just fine! Add to this shitshow the latest shocking revelation: he’s been sending suggestive texts to another one of our friends and didn’t stop until her boyfriend punched his lights out.

It’s a couple of weeks since I heard anything so who knows what else he’s gotten up to since then. I want to shout I TOLD YOU SO from the rooftops, but I’m too classy for that. Instead, I let bygones be bygones and gave her a hug and a kiss when I saw her last - even though she spent the entire dinner telling us every single juicy infraction and nobody else got a word in edgewise...

I used to see people pretty clearly, and I thought they were mostly made of bullshit. I literally thought their egos were bigger than they were. I also thought Bill Clinton was an obvious sleazebag, just by the way he talked, and couldn't believe nobody else saw it. I also thought the lead singer of Duran Duran was evil just because of the way he sang, and I'm still not sure why. I guess it was personal wounds, desires and biases mixed in with my acute and extremely pure perception. But either way, I don't have any of that perception now. I can't relate to having thought any of those things I said above now. I think part of the reason why may be because I spent a few years trying to put myself into other, normal people's minds to better understand them, because I thought I had to act more like them to get by in this world. I think just the act of trying to put myself in their minds made me more like them and hence more normal and crappy.