"2006 was the year she left the university."

"C'est en 2006 qu'elle a quitté l'université."

Part of a series from a page titled "Practice Quiz on Relative Pronouns."

The little grey box popped up, telling her she had tried to make an illegal move—she had clicked on the 8 of spades, not the 3. It was difficult to see the cards through her tears. She wiped her eyes clumsily with the back of her hand and looked for a black 3. It was buried under five other cards; it would take a while to clear. Just one more fucking thing for her to deal with.

It was her nightly ritual. She took a shower and rolled her eyes at any sort of literary interpretation of cleansing. Still wrapped in her towel, hair dripping down her back, she sat at her computer and played Freecell, mechanically, rhythmically. It was usually only three or four games before the tears would start, mostly silently; only occasionally a violent intake of breath would indicate a cadence, and this action had the general effect that she became aware of her situation and was immediately ashamed for crying alone in her apartment.

She never ceased clicking away at the game.

This session
Won: 33
Lost: 45
Longest Streak: 7 wins

Once the clock reached midnight, she promised herself only one more game before bed. Every night. One more game. One more win. One more streak of five wins. It was a reflex to hit the ‘play again’ button. She didn’t even want to. But she did. It was the only productivity she could manage. God, how pathetic. One in the morning. One-thirty. Eventually the tears stopped, but only for purely physical reasons. The motivation remained.

She paused to line her toothbrush with toothpaste, but even then she returned to her game, brushing absentmindedly as she cleared the slots.

Forty-five minutes later, she put on her pajamas.

After she had finally achieved one last streak of three wins, she found the strength to close the game.

She set her computer to standby and lay in bed, trying a multitude of different positions. Nothing was comfortable. But of course—she didn’t deserve to be happy while awake, she didn’t deserve to fall asleep, she didn’t deserve to have a few hours away from the corporeal pain that was the appropriate literary accompaniment to the emotional pain she felt.

God, she hated literature. Nothing was ever what it was; it was all metaphor, motivation, causation. Author’s intent. Subtext. It wasn’t enough to recognize something and celebrate it for its beauty. Instead, you had to dissect it. Shred its innards. Manipulate them. Force them into something they weren’t. And guess what? When you’re done, some guy wearing a bowtie who forgets every day to roll down his pant leg from his bike ride to campus will take great pleasure in telling you all the ways in which you’re wrong. Because Rimbaud’s Bateau ivre was, in fact, a canoe. Obviously. That was the point of the poem.

So she tossed and turned and tried not to look at the clock. That’s what they told insomniacs: looking at the clock only makes you more frustrated. She nearly snorted when she recalled that—as if she could feel any more frustrated. She continued down the checklist on her mental pamphlet of Coping With Insomnia. Box number two: if it’s been more than thirty minutes and you haven’t fallen asleep, get out of bed and do a quiet activity for a little bit before trying again.

This was cause for a snort as well. Even with a generous dosage of NyQuil, it took over an hour for her to finally relax enough to crash into a fitful sleep. It had been this way as long as she could remember. She had been the only 6-year-old that suffered from insomnia. If there was one thing her parents had taught her, it was that her judgment couldn’t be trusted and that every decision in life should be agonized over, replayed in her head ad infinitum, even after les jeux had been faits. She absorbed this quickly and wholly. Always the diligent and capable scholar. A+.

3:42. She rose from bed and returned to the computer, resuming the cycle of play.

This session
Won: 171
Lost: 217
Longest Streak: 8 wins.