Even after I explained twice, Matome still didn’t get it. He tried, though. But he struggled to grasp how someone could be both lively and suicidal at the same time.

He violently coughed before saying, “So it was you?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I mean…yeah.”

“I still think it’s strange. Maybe you should explain one more time.”

“See,” I said, “I had just celebrated an uneventful twenty-fourth birthday and realised that all my achievement could be summarised in less than five sentences. I was a finance graduate; I was not unmarried and pregnant; I was not a drug addict; and most importantly, I was somehow still alive. And so, unsatisfied with my mediocrity, I started exploring things I hoped would improve my list of achievements.”

I stopped, giving my leg a scratch. “I always thought I was a fair writer, and I was familiar with the cliché of artists being prone to madness and poverty. So I tried navigating the well-trodden path of degeneracy as a way of achieving creativity.”

“You wanted to be a degenerate?”

“Yes, Matome, but that’s not the point.”

“Then what is?”

“Maybe if you listened – ”

“I have been listening.”

“I will tell it differently this time, I swear. You’ll understand when I’m done.”

He shrugged, dabbing a tissue at the corners of his mouth. “If you say so.”

“I do.” I gave him a small smile.  “See, I found a website with contact details of a few literary magazines. I then quickly composed a query letter and, finally, submitted works I’d been writing since I was nineteen. In my eyes, everything I wrote was absolutely marvellous. I was sure that only a fraction of my submissions, if any at all, would be rejected. But alas, they were all rejected.”

“Did they tell you what was wrong? The editors, I mean.”