Coroner’s report stated the cause of death was puffy sleeves underneath a tight cardigan. My mother made me wear it aged approximately four years, on our summer holiday in Betws-y-Coed. She paired this horror with slippy sandals for picnicking and messing around by the river, thus ensuring my inability to leap from rock to rock like the gazelle I clearly was.
This is my first memory of dying. There were many more.
Cause of death: fajitas.
Specifically: fajita juice running out of the tortilla, down the palm of my hand, and under my watch strap.
Cause of death: a drop of water splashed onto my sleeve as I washed my hands.
Cause of death: wet wool. WET WOOL.
In public toilets, I stare aghast as perfect strangers go about their business washing their hands without rolling up their sleeves. I die on their behalf, just briefly, as I struggle to remove my coat, my jumper, my long sleeves, and my skin before I venture to the taps myself.
Cause of death: the hand-dryer placed above elbow-height on the wall.
Cause of death: stepping on something wet in socks. Stepping on something wet not in socks. Toilet splashback.
Visiting the hairdresser is fraught with peril. Many a time I’ve died as the hairdresser placed the rubber shoulder mat on top of my wet hair, pressing the wetness into my clothes and my skin, before pulling my hair out again to cut it. This was nearly a double fatality. I changed hairdresser again and again, trying to find one who was not demonic in their handling of wet hair.
Eventually I discovered the delights of a hairdresser who takes clients in her home and didn’t attempt to murder me every time I sat in the chair. The privacy also lets me clutch the towel so tightly around my neck that I leave ligature marks, but don’t get judged for it.
I prefer visible neck bruises to the slow trickle of water down my neck, onto my back, and into my soul where it strangles me from the inside out.
I’ve died many times over the years. Little tiny deaths that make me look like a crazy person because it’s either die quietly inside or peel off my own skin, step out of it, and walk my uncomfortable bones away.
I’d be naked if I could be naked without actually touching anything.
Cause of death: a poloneck sweater. A top that is very tight underneath the armpits. THE WRONG SOCKS.
Cause of death: the apoplectic rage induced by tearing off toilet roll imperfectly so a tiny strip rips and flutters in the breeze.
Cause of death: accidentally touching a stranger while trying to help them open the door in the café.
Cause of death: a kitchen filled with steam, work surfaces glistening in a thin layer of grease and moisture and existential sadness.
Cause of death: bin juice.
Cause of death: pre-ketchup discharge.
Cause of death: that juice that gathers on top of a yoghurt you opened the day before.
Cause of death: watching someone dangle their own hair into their food as they eat. Being near someone who is chewing with their mouth open. Other people existing out loud next to me.
Cause of death: every single person who moves in an otherwise lovely café scraping their chair along the floor in a way that causes fantasies of mass murder. Spaces that claim to be cosy but which in fact are little noise boxes that bounce and ampify every single sound and throw them all at a single pair of ears at the same time, causing stabby rage and shaking hands. Especially if that space is called “Sensory & Rye” in a staggering twist of irony.
Cause of death: soggy bread.
Cause of death: bits in the washing up water.
Cause of death: the big light is on in the bathroom late at night. Someone says, “Why are you sitting in the dark?” and turns on the big light in the living room. The big light.
Cause of death: the thing I said 13 years, 7 months, 2 weeks, 4 days, 23 hours, and 47 seconds ago, making me grind my teeth so hard my jaw exploded, sending shards of bone into my brain and causing paralysis, followed by personality implosion and brain death.