To Life.

Sitting on her grandfather's comfortable green lounge chair — worn after years of use, from even before her grandfather acquired it, probably from one of many antique shops frequented by the man — Lila drank her glass of water. She drank the glass of water, she thought, the way only the contemplative or the depressed do. None of those normal sips. She took long, drawn out sips. Sip. Sip. Sip. Sip. Then, finally, swallow. As though even the task of drinking involved too much effort. In shared company with many other daily tasks we all complete. Teeth brushing, showering, hair washing, dressing, weather checking, bus catching. Routine. Monotonous.

In recent months, Lila had begun journalling these tasks and the times at which they are performed. Even knowing that the writing of the daily minutia that consumed her life was unusual, she scrawled each detail in her little black notebook, every evening, same time. In black pen, of course, because who could use blue pen in a black notebook? It occurred to Lila that, unlike other similar habits — diary keeping or calendar writing — she had not yet stopped the noting of the monotonous in that little black book, even though it had been several months. In the past, such activities ceased within a month or two — the guilt of a task unfinished, though — that lasted much longer. So what was different about this recent journaling of routine tasks? It was almost as though the record keeping made the tasks seem less monotonous.

And so she walked in this same, exhausted, monotonous way — a slow trudge — to the lawyers office. The office was not easy to find and, having sold her car a year earlier to make rent, Lila arrived looking panicked, with the sheen only gym-goers and the anxious don. Sweat. And the awareness of her own appearance to others — as though she was looking at herself through a microscope from above. Lila struggled to calm herself enough to appear unfrazzled. 'So what?' she tried to think to herself, as she rambled through an introduction to the receptionist and a request to see a Ms M. Hardy. Interacting with the world and the people outside her home, which consisted of her absent roommate Beatrix and a stray cat they named Ginger, squarely thrust her personality into the category of anxious, rather than depressed. What a stark difference being on the other side of a door can make.

Inside, the office was not what Lila had expected. A modest room, with few decorations, an ordinary black chair for clients and a desk chair to match sat on opposing ends of a glass desk with a black frame. So different to the Persian carpets, tall bookshelves and devouring brown leather lounges Lila had pictured. Regardless, in the chair that existed outside of her imaginings, Lila sat trying to listen as best she could. Trying not to allow her thoughts to wander. So many potholes of distraction lay lurking in her mind. Ms Hardy, a tall woman in her mid-thirties with shiny black hair pulled back severely, proceeded to tell Lila about her grandfather. Her grandfather, who she had not seen — no, who she had been prevented from seeing — for 3 years, had left her everything he had. This was not much considering what he was once worth, having been swindled by Lila's uncle more times than even Lila knew. But $20,000 was a lot of money for someone like Lila, even if it was only a small amount of what her grandfather had once had.

Lila was raised by her grandfather, her mother having died shortly after Lila was born and her father wanting none of the burden that children can bring — whether or not Lila was at fault for her own existence, her father never considered. And, Lila was the sole carer for her grandfather for 2 years after he began to deteriorate, both physically and mentally. The 3 years after that, Lila didn't know how her grandfather was. After the 2 years Lila had been caring for her grandfather, her uncle, absent as he was from her grandfather's life, finally got up to speed with the situation. Lila was only 17 at the time. Her uncle intervened, became power of attorney for her grandfather and barred her from entering or calling the horrible nursing home — cheap and nasty — her grandfather was stuffed into. But, as it turned out or, rather, as Ms Hardy explained, Lila's uncle's attempts at getting what he thought was still a considerable sum of money upon Lila's grandfather's death, proved futile. Her grandfather had already made a water-tight — well, as water-tight as is possible — will before he was diagnosed with any dementia.

The money was Lila's. And so she walked home a little lighter that day. But only a little. Sure, her grandfather's wishes were fulfilled and her uncle didn't get his way for once, but grandfather still spent the last 3 years of his life alone. Left to deteriorate, slowly, like forgotten fruit left to rot in a bowl. Still, Lila wanted to do something with her inheritance that would please her grandfather. Not something grand and stupid, as was befitting for her age and stage of life. Something boring and wise was the course.

In movies and books, things are solved so quickly — people come into money and decide how they will spend it almost instantly, people break up with their partners and move to other countries within a week. This, of course, is not typically how things go in real life with real people. And Lila was no exception. That day, after the meeting with the lawyer, Lila sat in her grandfather's worn green chair, and, as she wept, subtly and without paying any notice, Lila googled wise things to do with the money. She thought of investments, charities, and savings. She thought of furniture, of disappearing loans, and of business ideas. And then, gradually, she stopped thinking about it so much.

Things went on much like they had before. Brush teeth, shower, drink water. Sip. Sip. Sip. Sip — swallow. Lila still went about journalling the monotonous as well. That was until she decided what to do with the money.

Lila decided to use the money to put a deposit down on a flat. Nothing too exciting — sensible, mature. But the night after she'd made that decision, she went to journal the times of the monotonous activities of the day. 8:00, fed Ginger, 8:15: brushed teeth, 8:30: showered, 9:00, decided to... And then she stopped. She was going to write down that she'd decided to buy the flat. That was what she really wanted to write about, after all. It was exciting and frightening and, although she still missed her grandfather, she knew that he would be proud of her. But her little black book was not for writing down the excitement of her life. It was for the monotonous only.

And she didn't want to only think about the monotonous or depressing parts of life any longer. It was clouding her ability to see her life for what it really was. Beautiful and ugly, boring and exciting, sad and jolly, lonely and crowded. Complex. And her journaling, as well as her thoughts — after all, even her own words affected her disposition — needed to reflect that. So she started a new little black book. And in it, Lila planned to write. She planned to write everything.