The Inevitable

It's inevitable now, isn't it? The end. So much struggle, so much confusion, so much pain. All I have to do is wait a few moments, and it's done. All of it.

Finally.

Just finding my way to the roof was unimaginably difficult. "Who are you?" "You're not supposed to be here!" "Where are you going?" "Who are you with?" So many questions. So many half-answered evasions. But finally, I found the path to the door that opened out onto the roof of this fifteen story building downtown, overlooking the entire cursed city that sucked my entire life out of me. There was really no life left anyway. What did it even matter?

And still I heard them coming. As if it wasn't such a harrowing moment of decision to finally commit to my action. "Stop him!" "He's going to jump!" "Wait, you have so much to live for!"

Like what? Name one thing I have to live for. My crummy job? My absolute loneliness? My crippling debt? This world full of war and hatred and a never-ending pandemic perpetuated by ignorant fools who refuse to fix it?

It will all be gone in a moment. "Into the hands of God," Mama would have said. God. What a laughable concept. God wouldn't have allowed all of this to happen. God would not have let this world descend into such madness. There is no god. There is no afterlife. My life will end and nothingness will consume me.

Nothingness.

That word felt like a hand wrapped around my throat. I had thought about death before, how I would suddenly become nothing, but now, at that moment where I can't go back, it terrified me. Horrified me. My eyes widened, my body shivered, my mind raced. I didn't scream when I jumped, but now, halfway to oblivion, I started to scream. A panicked, shrill, unfocused scream of sheer terror.

"You have so much to live for." The words echoed in my mind.

I do. I have myself to live for. I have the future to live for. No matter how bad things are, at least I have more of it to experience. I have to keep on. I have to live.

What have I done?

I closed my eyes and cried as the fall ended.

A few hours later, I woke up in the hospital, in horrible pain. Alive. I had been saved somehow. Not by some uncaring god, but by a person who cared about some poor sucker who believed for a moment that his death was necessary. Who knew that it was not. I never knew who saved me or how, but I knew I was alive.

It would be difficult. I was now labeled suicidal. Despite being somehow saved, I still sustained many critical injuries that I would have to heal. But none of that mattered. I would live on. For how much longer, I don't know.

But I would make sure that it would be as long as possible.