10 Antimatter (2)

Three hours before she decided to die, her whole being ached with regret, as if the despair in her mind was somehow in her torso and limbs too. As if it had colonised every part of her.

It reminded her that everyone was better off without her. You get near a black hole and the gravitational pull drags you into its bleak, dark reality.

The thought was like a ceaseless mind-cramp, something too uncomfortable to bear yet too strong to avoid.

Nora went through her social media. No messages, no comments, no new followers, no friend requests. She was antimatter, with added self-pity.

She went on Instagram and saw everyone had worked out how to live, except her. She posted a rambling update on Facebook, which she didn’t even really use any more.

Two hours before she decided to die, she opened a bottle of wine.

Old philosophy textbooks looked down at her, ghost furnishings from her university days, when life still had possibility. A yucca plant and three tiny, squat potted cacti. She imagined being a non-sentient life form sitting in a pot all day was probably an easier existence.

She sat down at the little electric piano but played nothing. She thought of sitting by Leo’s side, teaching him Chopin’s Prelude in E Minor. Happy moments can turn into pain, given time.

There was an old musician’s cliché, about how there were no wrong notes on a piano. But her life was a cacophony of nonsense. A piece that could have gone in wonderful directions, but now went nowhere at all.

Time slipped by. She stared into space.

After the wine a realisation hit her with total clarity. She wasn’t made for this life.

Every move had been a mistake, every decision a disaster, every day a retreat from who she’d imagined she’d be.

Swimmer. Musician. Philosopher. Spouse. Traveller. Glaciologist. Happy. Loved.

Nothing.

She couldn’t even manage ‘cat owner’. Or ‘one-hour-a-week piano tutor’. Or ‘human capable of conversation’.

The tablets weren’t working.

She finished the wine. All of it.

‘I miss you,’ she said into the air, as if the spirits of every person she’d loved were in the room with her.

She called her brother and left a voicemail when he didn’t pick up.

‘I love you, Joe. I just wanted you to know that. There’s nothing you could have done. This is about me. Thank you for being my brother. I love you. Bye.’

It began to rain again, so she sat there with the blinds open, staring at the drops on the glass.

The time was now twenty-two minutes past eleven.

She knew only one thing with absolute certainty: she didn’t want to reach tomorrow. She stood up. She found a pen and a piece of paper.

It was, she decided, a very good time to die.