For the longest time, I planned on killing myself.
If I truly loved him, if he had really been my everything, then living was a selfish act. By living, I was essentially saying I could live without him, that what we had meant to each other wasn’t the most important thing in my life. That I was more important than us.
At least, that’s what I believed and maybe, deep down, what I still believe but, spoiler alert, I’m still here so obviously I didn’t slit my wrists or go for a last daytime stroll which are the two most popular forms of suicide nowadays. I kept breathing and kept living and eventually those things became habit again. I wish I could give you some noble reason for my decision to stay alive, like I didn’t want to dishonour his memory, or that I thought every human life is too valuable or I felt responsible for my role and duties in our little community.
It was none of those things.
I wanted to live.
Despite my grief, my loss, his memory, his absence, I wanted to live.
So, I had my new underground family, I had my duties to the community, I had old copies of chick-lit classics. Years went by, I did the whole breathing and living routine, I helped to cook, I helped with some child-minding - I was a good aunty - and sometimes I did orderly duty at our little hospital/surgery. Note: whatever miracles modern medicine works, it works a lot less in the dark.
Men made advances and I refused, knowing there were people out there, men and women, who due to brute force or survival needs no longer had the option of refusing an advance but I was lucky enough, and knew it, to be in a pocket of fading civilisation where nobody had gone full Lord of the Flies or Room or whatever.
See, however much it hurt losing him, and believe me, it fucking hurt, it was worse again because of our circumstances.
It’s like stubbing your toe when you have a hangover. Stubbing your toe is bad enough on a regular day but when you’re hungover it’s a red-alert-emotional-crisis-existential-angst-inducing-disaster. If Simon, who was kind and brave and more optimistic than I thought any of us had a right to be, was my toe and losing him was stubbing it and the situation me and the rest of humanity were in was the hangover then…well I’m rambling but you get it. I felt it was best for a girl to watch her footing and keep herself balanced in these hungover times.
Did I mention the dangers of thinking you know it all?
Just when you think you’ve found a plan you can work with, a way to keep your shit on track, life sneaks up on you and stubs your fucking toe.
On the night the three, or technically four strangers appeared I was a few weeks shy of my thirty-ninth birthday and I knew there wouldn’t be any candles on my birthday cake.
It’s a joke. Ha ha ha.529Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡPDPARVQ6YC
