When I was a child, my parents took me to the London Planetarium. I was excited about space and other worlds in the way that a child gets excited about that kind of thing: it filled me with wonder, but none of the practicality of it all. I used to say I wanted to be a rocket scientist, with no idea what would be involved with that; I just wanted to go to space, because it was cool to me after watching shows like Star Trek and whatever. Like it would all be that easy.

  The Planetarium was awesome, I loved it, reading exhibits talking about all the planets, and comets and the asteroid belt. It ended in a large auditorium, my first time in anything like it. We took our seats and looked up towards the ceiling, as the lights dimmed and an animated recorded journey through the solar system began to play.

  It was incredible to me at the time, blowing my little mind as it felt like I was being flown through space, settling into orbit around each of our local planets as a booming voice told us about the unique features of each one, from how the sky would look different on one or how another was made of gas or the literally acidic rain that pelted the surface of another.

  I was enthralled, my head tilted up and marvelling at it all, as our journey moved towards the centre of our solar system and we finally talked about our own star, the Sun.

  It talked about how it was made, about the incredible power that it put out, even delving into ideas on how we could harness this immense output, some of which were already in practice. And then it told us about the life cycles of a star.

  I learned how we were still in the relatively young phase of the life of our sun, and how after many millennia it would change. I sat there, eyes wide as suddenly the knowledge of the end of the all things was poured into me, and something changed.

  Millennia from now, the sun would start to use up all it's fuel and would swell, turning red and engulfing the planets of the inner solar system; Mercury, then Venus, and of course Earth. Eventually, after even more vast passages of time went past, the sun would collapse in on itself. A white dwarf maybe, or even a black hole, and if it did that, it would start pulling in everything left around it, until nothing was left. Space would simply become empty, devoid of anything. Just...nothing.

  My parents jumped as I suddenly started bawling my eyes out, wailing, inconsolable. Our tour of the Planetarium was over anyway, and they rushed me and my sisters outside before kneeling in front of me and trying to work out what set me off and why I was so upset. Trying to make me feel better.

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  Back then, obviously, I couldn't really put into words why I was crying. I just said the sun was going to die, I told them it was scary, how we would all die and disappear but I know now the thought of it was probably too big for me really at the time. Still, it had knocked something loose in my little head.

  They held me and made soothing sounds, and when that didn't work, they tried a different track. I was a pretty precocious kid, not to sound too big headed but I was pretty clever and advanced for my age back then, so I think they thought just giving me honesty would help me to settle down. So, they reminded me how that wasn't going to happen for a very, very, very long time. That we didn't have to worry about it, as we would be long gone by then anyway. No one I knew now would be burning up, we'd all be long buried, and that also wasn't going to happen for a long, long time too, they assured me.

  It didn't work. I kept crying and sniffling for what had to be a good hour afterwards, until we found an ice cream van and they got me and my sisters something else to concentrate on. Kids being kids, it worked.

  But whatever was shook loose in me stayed that way, I think.

  I could never quite put into words just what this feeling was inside me, why the idea of that far-flung ending hurt me so much, not really. But I often found myself thinking back to that day, even if some of the details became fuzzier with time, the feeling remained. That discomfort, that unnerving sense of unravelling, of a big, terrifying truth.

  Now, sometimes, I wonder if I might know what was really to blame for the way it made me feel. It wasn't the idea of dying, or an ending. I don't think that really scared me, even back then.

  Instead, I think what really unsettled me was the idea of complete and utter erasure. Not just dying, or being buried and gone, but to see any semblance that you were ever even here, ever even alive, wiped out. And the scale of it on that day in the Planetarium was too much; not only would I one day be gone and forgotten and any mark that I was ever here lost, but the whole of the human race, all our art, all our history, wiped from any record that mattered.

  If we never left the planet, everything everyone had ever done would just be burned away into stardust. Our impact on the universe would be gone, like we were never here at all.

  Like we never mattered.

  That's what terrified me more than anything, and has all through my life. And beyond, I guess. That idea that nothing I ever did ever mattered, or ever will.

  When confronted by that, I'd sink into that depression, that feeling of ‘what was the point’. The sound of all the air in the universe being let out drowning everything else around me.

  If none of it really matters...if I didn't really matter, then maybe it was better to just skip to the end. To meet the void on my terms.

  It might be the only choice I ever really had anyway.

  Or so I thought.