Over the next few weeks something changed. Natasha and I exchanged messages (sometimes every couple of days, sometimes every hour), and, gradually, it felt different.
What I mean by the afterlife is this: I don’t think that death is the end. I think it’s just the beginning. I know that people live on after death. Spirits. So I’m a bit excited to find out what it feels like when that happens.
I stared at those words for forty-eight hours because I didn’t really know how to reply. I knew lots of people believed in life after death in various forms, but I’d never heard someone of my own age say they believed in spirits. That was the same thing as ghosts. Everyone knew ghosts weren’t real. Didn’t they?
She wrote again.
Hey, Libby! Write back! Don’t freak out about the afterlife! It’s fine. Tell me what you believe! Every idea is valid. And ‘nothing’ is a valid idea too. Here’s a thing I was reading about the other day: human brains have an inbuilt thing that stops us being able to think about our own deaths. It’s like the ends of magnets. If we try to confront it head on, we just swerve away and think about something else. It’s kind of self-preservation.
That feels true, doesn’t it? So maybe I can only look at our upcoming extinction and feel OK about it because I believe that death isn’t the end. Otherwise I wouldn’t be able to focus on it at all.
I thought about that for a bit. Then I took a deep breath, reminded myself that I was never going to meet her, and wrote:
That makes sense. About the not being able to think about it. The magnets. I think that’s what’s happening with my dad and stepmum actually. Because they have the babies they just can’t think about the Creep. They don’t talk about it unless they have to and then they just say things like ‘what might happen’ as if it probably won’t. I guess if you can’t think about your own death, you certainly can’t think about your children’s.
She replied at once:
Exactly. You can’t. And that’s why it’s kind of an amazing time to be alive. I mean, how lucky are we? How incredibly privileged to see the most enormous thing that will ever happen to the human race? People have lived for hundreds of thousands of years, and we get to be the ones here at the end. We actually get to witness something immense. I mean, if you were a dinosaur, you’d want to be the one looking at the sky and seeing the meteor, right?
I wasn’t sure quite why, but that perspective changed me. It gave me a new way of looking at things, and I found I was able to open up and argue back:
It’s not really a privilege because we made it happen. If we’d treated the planet better, we’d get to stay here. I’d prefer that TBH. I don’t know if there really is a Chinese curse that goes ‘May you live in interesting times’ or if that’s just a bit of a racist myth, but it would be quite nice to live in boring ones, don’t you think? My mum says the nineties were like that.
— — —
Well, sure. But the thing with the nineties is that all the crap was just round the corner. This is the dinner we’ve been served, so let’s grab it with both hands and eat the fuck out of it. Right? You in?
I smiled as I sat in my cosy bedroom, thousands of miles from her, and wrote:
Yes. I’m in. Here’s the thing, though. I haven’t wanted to say this to you before. But in real life I’m incredibly shy.
I stared at those words. I waited to see what she would say. But when she did respond, she just said:
Hey, I used to be shy too. I got over it by pretending I wasn’t, and then suddenly I wasn’t any more. I can totally help you fix that if you’d like me to.
Then she went back to talking about the dinosaurs.
After that I could write much more to her. She told me all the wild and wonderful things she was doing in New York, and I told her about my daily tiny dilemmas. I told her about Zoe. I told her about Max. She encouraged me, and never laughed at me, and she made me feel better than I had for a long time. Soon I couldn’t imagine my life without her in it.
And then one morning I read a message from her.
I want to help you get the girl, you know. I’ve been you. I can’t stress that enough: I know how it feels. Do you want me to talk you through it until you’re not shy any more?
I thought about that for ages and replied:
I think I do. Please.
Natasha said:
It’s easy. I’m going to give you a list of tasks. I need you to do each one of them, and come back with photo proof that you’ve done it. Ten things. When you’ve done them I guarantee you’ll feel different.
I waited for the list, but it didn’t arrive. It wasn’t going to be that neat and ordered. She said she would send the tasks one by one, when I was least expecting them.