I hadn't been feeling great. For the first time in a while I'd been struggling. I felt that to get out of my head, I needed to get out of my flat.
A cycle ride into Central London, the weather bright but chilly, some exercise to exercise the thoughts.
I ended up on the South Bank, sat outside a Pret, drinking weak filter coffee. I was writing down thoughts, but not getting the point I wanted to make quite right.
Frustrated and with the light fading as quickly as the temperature. When it got too painfully cold to hold my pen, I decided to move on. I took the stairs up to the bridge that would carry me over the Thames.
The music blasting through my air pods — not only keeping my mind active, but also creating silent performers of the other people crossing the river.
I danced around the selfie posers, the traffic coming the other way, the people stopping to admire the view. I ended up stuck behind an elderly couple who were shuffling along at a pace slower than mine, but still respectable.
The collar of her bright red coat flapped against her thin neck. His outfit, either effort for a special occasion or just his normal leaving the house clothes — something that generation cared about.
Suddenly he stopped and turned to the right, something in the distance towards St Paul's had grabbed his attention. The woman in red didn't notice. I only noticed in time to just about swerve around him, brushing against the back of his woollen coat.
It took about fifteen paces for his wife to notice a part of her was missing.
She glanced ever so slightly backwards, assuming she'd find him just behind her. When she saw nothing, she checked the other side — nothing. I sensed a brief moment of panic, like when you've put something in the wrong pocket and for a brief moment, when you reach for it and it's not where it's supposed to be.
I dodged around her, as she finally found him in her sights, still looking out towards the old cathedral, a slightly resigned look on her face, that comes from decades of knowing someone. What's he found now?
Halfway across the bridge I stopped.
I don't know why.
I glanced over the edge — the side of the bridge that pushed up against a parallel railway bridge. I looked down at the murky brown-green water. The current, wind and bridge's concrete piers creating a spa like icy turbulence.
I imagined myself leaping over the barrier into the water. How the coldness would instantly take my breath away. I'd swing my arms wildly, instinctively to stay afloat as I forced air into my lungs with the tiny breaths I could manage.
I wondered what the woman in the red coat would say to people afterwards. It was awful, there was nothing we could do.
I imagined my clothing, now icy and wet clinging to my limbs, constricting me and growing in weight until my instinctive kicking and splashing of arms could no longer keep me afloat.
I wondered if I'd feel calm as I got dragged under into the current, whether I would resign myself to the inevitable or whether some human instinct to survive would win.
I vaguely remembered something about the current being so strong that most bodies are never found, or if they are, they wash up weeks later, and miles away.
Then I stopped thinking.
I just felt this strong urge, this pull to do it. To just do it. The barrier was low enough, it would be easy to leap over.
Then as suddenly as I'd stopped, I found myself walking away.