Here’s the thing nobody tells you about surviving.
There’s an emptiness to it, something deep inside you that feels wrong. As if there’s a place where something used to be, something so entirely entwined with your very being that you’ve never thought about having to miss it because it’s always been there, present and unobtrusive. Like your heart, always beating away without instruction to do so. Your lungs breathing without you ever thinking about it. Unless, of course, you’re gasping for breath, frantically scrambling at the collar of your shirt trying to get it off, to make space because you can’t fucking –
I digress.
It’s the way everything feels dark, darker than dark. A black hole in front of your eyes, only visible to you but always present. Growing and gnawing away at your perception of the world until there’s nothing in front of you but that pressing darkness, staining the edges of your vision like ink spilled on a page. Throwing everything into stark contrast. Colours don’t exist anymore, no, it’s all white and grey next to that endless gaping black drifting next to it.
It eats away at you, something like that. That emptiness under your ribs, that darkness in your vision. It leaves you alive but not living, going through the motions trying to figure out why you can’t feel anything anymore, what is wrong with you? What is happening?
It’s being terrified but not having the energy to feel it.
An endless sort of nothingness, numbing your mind and your body until you feel more dead than alive. The sort of feeling that has you staring at your bedroom ceiling at night wondering if this is it. That has you praying that some sort of higher power will hear your questions and provide an explanation, never mind that you have never believed in the existence of any type of God.
(Lord, if this is it, why are we even here?)
(Why am I even alive?)
(What am I doing it for?)
(Are you there?)
(Hello?)
No one answers, but you hadn’t expected anyone too. Loneliness is your oldest friend. Nevertheless, you keep trying. It’s all you’ve ever known.
It’s darkness. It’s an endless ocean of something which could be feelings, but you wouldn’t know because you haven’t felt anything in forever. It’s drowning, trying to claw your way out of the water but finding nothing to hold onto, desperately, hopelessly trying to get to the air, to fight, to do this one. More. Time.
And then.
There’s light. There’s colour.
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Regulus Black kills himself on a Tuesday night.
It’s not the most romantic day to kill oneself. In fact, he would argue it’s the least romantic day to go. There’s something so… mundane about Tuesdays. It’s not the weekend, or nearly the weekend. It’s not the middle of the week, when you can heave a sigh and think to yourself well, at least we’re halfway through. It’s not even Monday, when you can still hang on to that little bit of peace you have left from your reprieve, starting the day with renewed energy and gritted teeth. It’s just a Tuesday. A hopeless, endless, Tuesday.
Maybe it’s fitting that it happens then.
Quietly, calmly, Regulus looks over the things he’s laid out on his desk. It’s completely empty, except for the things he needs tonight. In fact, his entire bedroom is empty, stripped of the little personal belongings he had. Gone are the pictures of his friends on the walls, the movie poster Sirius had gifted him. Gone is his bedside table, with in the drawer his favourite books and the postcards Barty had sent him from his travels. Everything neatly packed away in boxes in the living room, labelled and ready to be brought away.
Regulus has never liked being a burden, not even in death.
The only thing that remains is his bed, pillows fluffed and covered in dark blue sheets. He made it carefully when he got home from work today. Put his favourite linen on, carefully tucking the corners in and pulling it tight so it looked perfect. Smoothed the wrinkles. He’d washed them just before, knowing that a fresh bed would be a comfort when –
Yeah.
It’s – strange. He had expected to feel… panicked, maybe. Or sad, or incredibly scared. Angry at the world, for making this his life. There’s none of that. There’s only a vague sense of detachment, like none of this is happening to him. As if he’s watching a movie from behind his eyes, vaguely bored but not bored enough to shut it off. Wondering idly what will happen next.
Laid out in neat rows are four letters. One addressed to Sirius, one for Barty, one for Evan and one for Pandora. All labelled clearly and cleanly, signed in his best handwriting. He didn’t bother writing one to his mother. No letter could ever make her forgive him for what he’s about to do.
There’s a bottle of vodka as well, next to a bottle of pills. It’s risky, he knows. There’s a lot of ways this could go wrong, a lot of ways this could end other than the way he intends it to. Another way he’d fail at his ambitions. He’d considered slicing his wrists, decreasing those odds, but he decided against it. Too messy, he reckons.
It’s all there, ready to go. A glance at the clock reveals it’s eleven pm, right about the time he had in mind. With a sigh, he grabs both the drink and the pills, and walks over to the bed. It’s a nice bed. He sinks slightly into the mattress as he situates himself in the middle, leaning back against the pillows.
It’s dark. The room is silent, except for the occasional bout of laughter from outside in the streets. There must be a party going on somewhere, Regulus thinks. It’s nice, in a way. Knowing that he’s not completely alone.
He unscrews the cap of the pill bottle, shaking a few into his hands. They’re not pills, exactly, but capsules. One half a pale pink colour, the other white. They are rather pretty, actually, if you consider that they will be the end of him. He considers them for a moment. The colours are faint in the darkness, but there. A contrast against the black.
He sighs.
He puts his hand down.
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Regulus is always on time. In his five-and-a-half years working at the office, he’s never once been late. He’s called in sick once, when he had a car accident and had to be taken to the hospital to get checked out. He’d called in before they even loaded him into the ambulance, twenty minutes before he was expected to show up at work.
On Wednesday morning at 9:47 am, Regulus’ phone rings.
No one picks up.
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The thing about surviving is that you don’t, really.
Regulus Black kills himself on a Tuesday night, under a cloudy night sky and a waning moon. On Wednesday morning, he watches the sun rise.
It’s nice. The sky changes from a light blue to a pale yellow, followed by orange and red. There’s a few clouds, but there’s mostly the golden sunlight streaming through his windows and illuminating his tired face.
He’s tired. He’s achingly tired. Deep in his bones, slumbering there and dragging his limbs down. Making them heavy, making it difficult to move. But he doesn’t have to. He stands still, and watches the sun rise.
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What are the things that make you feel alive?
Go on, think about it. Really think about it.
(Are you?)
Listening to music. Dancing. Hearing the laughter of your friends. Eating an orange on your balcony in the early morning sun. Feeling the warmth of the sunlight on your face as you close your eyes. Breathing in the crisp morning air when you step outside. Listening to the rain dancing on your windows. Hugging your best friend. Seeing art that takes your breath away. Cooking dinner with someone you love. Having your cheeks hurt from smiling too hard. Feeling the cool grass beneath your feet on a warm summer’s day. Having your breath catch in your throat when someone asks whether they can kiss you. Smelling the pine trees in the forest when you go for a walk.
The list goes on and on and on.
Normal, unobtrusive things. Everyday occurrences, reframed and held up to the light to examine and realize that oh, that’s it. That make you think, I can do that too.
You just have to feel it.
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The thing about surviving is that it’s hard.
It turns out, killing yourself is not as easy as you think. It’s a slow process, many hours and many days and many weeks dedicated to killing so many parts of yourself that you don’t recognize who you’ve become. Actually, that’s not entirely true. The killing is easy. It’s the living that hard.
Regulus quits his job.
That’s the first step he takes. It takes him five days to do it, but on Monday morning he calls in at nine am sharp and quits on the spot. His boss is still spluttering on the other line as he hangs up the phone. He doesn’t go and collect his stuff. He killed that person, there’s no need to plunder his belongings too.
It’s strangely liberating, to step outside of this perceived image he’s built of himself. He’s Regulus Black – he doesn’t do unpredictable. And yet, here he is, sitting on his balcony and watching as two birds circle each other in the sky above him. They’ve been flying around for a few long minutes now, occasionally calling to one another. It’s nice. The breeze dances through his hair, lifting the strands slightly.
Regulus pops another orange slice into his mouth.
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Regulus changes his number.
It’s not that he doesn’t want to have any contact with anyone, it’s mostly that he wants to be able to pick who can reach him himself. His new phone has four contacts. Sirius, Barty, Evan and Pandora. No one else. There’s no one else he wants to reach.
He doesn’t touch those contacts for two weeks. You would think that would raise alarms, but unfortunately that isn’t true. The truth is, Regulus Black had been dying for months before he killed himself. Slowly but surely, everything except for that aching loneliness had left him. No one thinks twice about Regulus not calling, because he hasn’t spoken to any of them in months anyway.
It’s the reason his phone conversation with Sirius goes as follows:
“Sirius Black speaking.”
“Hi, it’s me.”
There’s silence on the other end of the line, the staticky sort of silence which makes Regulus think of the way stress balls feel when you squeeze them. Regulus studies the boxes standing in his living room from where he sits on the couch. They are labelled with black marker, saying things like kitchen, and bedroom, and trash and goodwill and for Sirius. His house may still be a shell, but it is no longer a tomb.
“Reg?” Sirius says in his ear, and Regulus looks away, “are you okay? What’s happening?” He sounds surprised and apprehensive, as if he’s expecting the other shoe to drop at any time. Regulus can’t blame him. The last time they spoke, it hadn’t been… good. Regulus ought to apologize, really
Instead, he says, “can you help me move some stuff?”
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It takes months for his house to feel like a home. What Regulus didn’t know before, which he does now, is that it’s not about the things inside, but the people. Before Regulus died, his house hardly saw anyone at all. He himself was only there to eat (he would mechanically chew through whatever he had made that day, something that would sustain him but he would not enjoy) and sleep (eight hours every night, in bed by eleven and up at seven). There was no one else.
It had felt hollow as a result. Any time a word was spoken, which was not often, it would echo of the walls in a faint attempt at a conversation. A word thrown out into the void, answering back to itself to entertain the illusion of warmth. It hadn’t worked.
Now, there is Sirius. He’s standing on a large sheet of plastic covering the ground, brandishing a paintbrush like he’s going to war. There’s a green swipe on his cheek, no doubt from when he went to wipe one of the flyaway hairs from his face. There’s a wall behind him, one which had been an off-white colour (it had once been white, but during those dark months it had slowly shrunk in on itself to become a faint greyish colour, if you squinted). Now, it was a warm green, something like the needles of a pine tree.
With Sirius, there is laughter. There is music. Regulus doesn’t know when exactly he’d learned how to laugh again, but it must’ve happened sometime because he can’t stop now. There’s a stitch in his side, and his cheeks hurt from the unfamiliar movement but Sirius is singing along and dancing and there’s paint in so many places where it shouldn’t be but it all makes Regulus feel so very alive.
It’s light too. Like the house has heaved a big sigh and straightened up so all of the dark corners are now catching the sunlight streaming through the open windows. As if it has simply been waiting for people to come along, for Regulus to stop haunting it and start living in it.
There’s Barty and Evan and Pandora, coming over to eat dinner at least once a week. Complimenting his new green wall, his new light grey sofa. Pandora runs a hand over the painting he’s hung on the wall opposite of the green one, a lovely little thing, before she takes a sip of her wine. The house smells sweet and tangy, courtesy of the pan bubbling on the stove while Barty and Evan stand next to it bickering over who has to set the table.
(“Quite colourful for you,” she remarks, eyes drifting over the oranges and reds of a rising sun put to paper, “For some reason I hadn’t taken you as the kind of person.”
“No, I suppose not,” Regulus answers, “but I’ve become one.”)
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Here’s the thing nobody tells you about living. It’s easy, really, once you get the hang of it.