In the worst of times, people display a strange tendency. It’s not commonly found in any species with a less complex brain, and honestly, I can’t be certain if that’s to our credit, or theirs. Humans can ignore their will to survive. Humans can fight it.
Michael began to flounder. His roommate tried to be understanding, but he didn’t make enough money to cover more than his half of the rent. His landlord was less forgiving, and reminded Michael that, at nineteen, he was an adult. He ought to know how the world works. He should be responsible.
Each day became a battle. Then, they became wars. From the first skirmish he’d have with himself when fighting to lift his head off his pillow, to the brawl he’d engage in when trying not to simply fall into bed at the end of the day, Michael was locked in combat against his own overwhelmed mind. His exhaustion was winning. His hygiene suffered, his performance at work was barely passable, and days would pass where he’d simply forget to eat.
It shouldn’t have come as a surprise to anyone when he needed to be rushed to the hospital, following an attempt on his own life.
They placed him on suicide watch. They held him for two weeks. He couldn’t afford the hospital fees, he argued, and why would he try to commit suicide again? He’d learned, hadn’t he? He’d been the one to make the call. He’d called his own ambulance, he’d tried to bandage his own wounds. For safety’s sake, they held him.
But he seemed better. The psychologist on-call asked him why, and Michael told him (a variation of) the truth:
He’d come home from work that day, having broken a guitar string that slashed open his finger. It wasn’t bleeding much, by that point, and he was home alone. He went to the kitchen, took the sharpest knife they owned, and locked himself in his room. He’d poked at the slim cut until it reopened and was dripping flesh blood down his palm. Then, with the edge of the knife, he followed the trail down. Slicing open his palm, cutting into his wrist, digging out the weakness and helplessness and pain.
It all came clear to him, then; he’d wanted to die.
He cut across the veins, slit himself right to the elbow, tried to follow suit along the other arm. That was when she came to him.
From there, Michael would get cagey. ‘It was like’, ‘I imagined’, ‘I pretended’. Those words were used out of fear. They’d call him insane, he knew, if he told them the truth.
His mother had come to him, as an angel.
Michael had gone to church, as a boy. He still went, on special occasion; Good Friday, Easter Sunday, Christmas. He’d always liked to think that angels watched over them, and now he knew.
His mother had embraced him, and he had known what bliss awaited him, if he would be the dutiful son. A man who took his own life would never know that unknowable Heaven, the kind he’d found in his angel-mother’s arms.
He was already beginning to forget what Heaven felt like, by the time he left the hospital.
He knew what kind of man he wanted to be. He wanted to be his mother’s good boy. He wanted to be a man of the Lord, so he would once again find Heaven.
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