Surprisingly, the day I died was beautiful.
If you’re wondering why it was a surprise? Well, because I’d spent most of my relatively short life in Wales. There are two things in abundance in that country – rain and sheep. So, when the clouds parted that morning and sun kissed green meadows as I drove to work, it was a pleasant gift. I should have known it was too good to be true.
If I’d known it was to be the last time I’d leave my house, I’d have taken longer to kiss my wife, had a cuddle with my dog, and probably called off work to go out into the Cambrian mountains and run myself ragged. Alas, foresight was not one of my talents.
As it stood, I went to work as normal, came home and took the dog out for a walk. Started the washing up after we got back, cleaned the kitchen, then undid all the hard work again by starting to cook. I heard the door open, small footsteps pattering on the wooden floors as Moss got off the sofa and ran to greet my wife as she came home. An easy meal, casual conversation and general life admin before I went out for a short run.
Hills, rocks, grassy gnolls and brambles everywhere…and then nothing.
That’s the worst part of everything – how anti-climactic it was. No drama, no big emotions, just a fatal aneurysm and everything goes black. I didn’t even fall over or anything. Everyone would think I’d tripped and the fall had rattled something loose in my brain, but the reality of it was just sheer bad luck – dead before I hit the ground.
Game over. Start again. Better luck next time.
Fuck me but what was the point? I’d spent near enough 20 years battling some form of futility. Depression, dissociation, whatever you want to call it. Most of my life had been spent feeling a bit of distance between myself and the world. I doubted it was a problem unique to me, but everyone seemed to just deal with it better than I did.
Because sure, everyone gets it to some degree, right? Go to college or get an apprenticeship, work away at a shitty job that you don’t care about, and then take your joy in the small moments between work and life when you can. Weekends, evenings, even lunchbreaks. And it would be good for a while, but then the monotony would start to set in again, and I’d start losing motivation once more.
The last decade had been better. I’d put the blame on three things if I had to pinpoint it; my wife, my dog, and running. The dog didn’t really count, as he was a relatively recent development. A nightmare bundle of energy and teeth and fur for a few months, and then once he left the puppy stage behind, just a nightmare bundle of energy and fur. But he was unpredictable and that helped somewhat.
Before him came my wife. She quite literally lit up my life. Not in a soppy romantic way, but more in a ‘rip open the blinds of my messy room and reveal all the stains and dirty clothes that needed sorting out’. Please understand this is metaphorical – I’d had a very clean flat before we met. Cleaning was easy for me, you see – just as boring as everything else.
But she came into my life, and instantly identified my issues. Didn’t really solve any of them, but that wasn’t her job anyway. Her understanding though, her presence and companionship, acted as an anchor.
I’d secretly worried for the first few years that I’d get bored of her as I did everything else. Again, please don’t misunderstand me. Not in a playboy dickhead kind of way, but I was in my mid-twenties by that point, and until then my experience of everything in life – literally everything – was that almost everything could be interesting, but only for a moment. People came and went, friendships and relationships ran their course, and I was helpless to stop it.
Not my wife though – never got bored of her. Which is probably the wrong way to think of it. She wasn’t exceptional in any way really. I obviously thought the world of her – most beautiful woman in Wales! – but in reality, I understood I had rose coloured glasses. She was as human as me, with all the resulting messiness that entails.
So, it was likely a personal flaw of mine that she had helped smooth over that saved our relationship from ending as all before it had. I just found the monotony interesting with her. I’d ask her how her day was, knowing what she’d say, but I’d still be interested to wait around and really hear her say it anyway. I was still trying to figure out how that worked when I died, so can’t give you a good answer there I’m afraid.
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But I won’t dwell too long on her. This is about me after all, and you don’t want to learn about someone much more interesting and compelling do you? So, the third and first thing that kept me going was running. My dog kept me entertained, my wife kept me connected, but running was the thing that really got me feeling for the first time.
Wales as a country is a land of green pastures and dilapidated houses, with about as much land you could truly call wild as a supermarket. Nevertheless, I still remember every single one of my runs through it. I started for fitness, since that’s what you were supposed to do, and never really enjoyed it too much – just another thing you do because everyone says you should and I guess it kind of helps the time pass. But then I started going further, slowing down and letting my legs carry me forwards, rather than push all the time.
And surprise surprise, I didn’t want to stop anymore. A handful of kilometers became a handful of miles, and then a handful became a bunch. A bunch became an armload and before I knew it, I was running a fuckton of miles every week.
They might not be standard measurements but once I started regularly running more than 10 miles at a time, I found I stopped caring for distances. I was working my way up from half marathons, to full ones, and then on to ultras in no time. All off-road, all in the low hills and the local mountains.
Whether Wales can be said to have ‘real mountains’ is up for debate, as I understand. And trust me, I get it. 800 meters isn’t much, and running around the Beacons doesn’t really count as mountaineering. I can imagine Americans and those in Europe scoffing and rolling their eyes respectively, when they compare our little hills to the Rockies or the Alps. And I agree.
But I loved the Cambrians and Beacons. Eryri and the Cumbrians too. I was under no illusions about the prowess and legend of my local hills, but goddammit I’d take what I could get. I had spent two decades feeling not much of anything, just plodding along with a vague feeling of wrongness in my chest.
Then I started plodding along outside through the countryside, and that feeling disappeared. The big empty whole got filled in with a million scents and sounds and feelings and I felt alive for the first time. The cold burn at the back of my throat, the ache in my lungs and legs, the thrash of long grasses slapping their fat heads against my shins as I ran through yet another fucking field waiting to be turned over as pasture for sheep.
That was another thing about Wales. It’s a corpse. The hills rise from the earth, bones whose flesh has been stripped away by logging centuries past. The bare grasses and heather that cover the rocks act as a sheet on a cold body, covering up the worst of it but unable to hide the loss of vitality and movement.
And the sheep! The sheep are the maggots, wriggling and worming their way over the surface of the dead country, chomping up every hint of wilderness struggling to survive. If I had my way, we’d have no more fucking sheep in this country, and the pastures would be turned into endless forests once more. I didn’t have my way though, so the woolly buggers persisted all the same. Outlived me too as luck would have it. What an irony.
I’d been saved by three things; running, my wife, and my dog. They’d stood in my corner and helped me battle my depression to a standstill, and just as I’d started gaining ground, my traitorous brain had flipped the fucking board and walked off.
Aneurysm, lights out. Didn’t seem fair really, but with hindsight I couldn’t be too mad. Wasn’t me that had to live with grief, had to learn to process those emotions and move on with life, pick it all back up and keep trudging on. Wasn’t me that had to wake each day and ask why, to feel guilt whenever they felt anything other than sadness, shame when they felt happy.
I was dead, and they were alive, and that’s all that there was to it.
Now, you’ve made it through my depressing reverie, and have a better idea of who I am. What’s the point? Why did you do it? Ha! There is no point, sucks to be you. Seriously though, good work, I know I can get repetitive in my own head and I’m proud of you for making it through.
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Do I want another go? Well yeah, obviously. It isn’t obvious? Well, I thought it was. I could do so much better this time. Let me back out there, put me in coach!
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Oh.
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Fuck, that’s a hell of a catch. I think…I think I still want to try though.
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No, no…that’s a nice offer but that will get way too complicated way too quickly. 100 years or nothing. I can’t face seeing her again with someone else.
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Yeah, of course I want her to be happy, but damn, its one thing to feel that in the abstract, and another to see in the flesh. No, 100 years in the future please.
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That’s also a big no from me, I like modern comforts. Did you not listen? I hate sheep, no way I’ll be happy as a 19th century farmer.
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I understand this isn’t a negotiation but…please? Just send me somewhere with a purpose. Somewhere new.
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Okay, now we’re getting somewhere! I agre-wait what do you mean I won’t remember?! No! fuck you, that was hard won---