Dr. Arthur pushed his chair back a few inches so he wasn’t close enough to touch me and then clasped his hands together on his lap. "Would you like some water or anything before we talk?"
I didn’t want anything that was going to prolong this torture. "No, thanks."
He nodded and kept his eyes locked on me. "All right. So. Walk me through yesterday."
Nothing would bring me less joy than that, but I looked at the grain of the wood on the table and tried to find a reasonable way to answer him. "It wasn't just yesterday. It’s been a long time coming."
"Fair enough.” He sat quietly for a moment as if waiting for me to volunteer more, but I just didn’t know how. “But sometimes it’s easier to start with the big moment and work backward."
So I did.
I told him about the plan I’d been working out for a few weeks, and how yesterday was easier than I expected. Knowing I wasn’t going to be alone anymore or a burden to the world was a huge relief.
"Were you scared?"
I thought about it for a second, but that was an easy answer. "Not really. I kept waiting to be scared, and it just never happened."
"So, why yesterday? What triggered you to know it was the time to put your plan into motion?" Dr. Arthur didn’t write anything down. He was just talking to me like we were friends. It was nice not to feel like I had to put on a front for him.
"I guess I was just…tired." As soon as that word was out of my mouth, I knew it was the truest thing I'd said out loud in a while. "Just really, really tired. I couldn’t keep trying to fix things that kept not getting fixed. And waking up every morning and having to decide all over again whether it was worth it was exhausting. I didn’t want to keep waiting. I just wanted to…go home."
“Go home?” Dr. Arthur didn’t seem to be judging me at all. Just genuinely curious. “What do you mean by that?”
I felt silly saying it to someone else, but I just wanted to get this conversation over with. “My grandpa. When he died, he said he was going home…and I miss him.” My eyes watered and tears I didn’t understand spilled down my cheeks. “He always made things better. I just wanted to go home too.”
“I’m sorry you felt so alone, Joshua.” Dr. Arthur reached over and gently patted my knee. “It’s hard to lose someone we love, and sometimes chasing after them feels like the only choice.”
Yeah. Exactly. I just nodded and wiped my cheeks with the bottom of Matthew’s t-shirt.
"When did you start to feel like there was no hope of things getting better for you?"
I traced a knot in the wood grain with my finger, unable to look him in the eyes. "When I ran out of lies." I shifted inthe chair, feeling sore from all the vomiting and being carried over Mathew’s shoulder. "I kept telling myself things would turn around and I just needed one thing to go right. But after a while, I couldn't even imagine what that would look like anymore. And once I couldn't imagine it, I stopped believing it was possible."
The doctor exhaled as if he were feeling my pain. "That's a heavy place to get to."
"Yeah."
"Can I ask about your people?" He raised an eyebrow as if this might be a lighter topic. I wasn’t. "Who's in your corner?"
"My mom told me to figure it out on my own." I said it without emotion because that was the only way I could. "When things got bad and I really needed a place to stay for a while, she said she didn't have room for that right now." I looked up and shrugged as if it didn’t tear my fucking heart out that she didn’t give a shit whether I lived or died. "I used to have some work friends, but when the job went away, we lost touch because I didn’t want to be a burden to anyone."
"Did you think you were being a burden?"
"Absolutely." This was something I felt confident about. There was no question about it. "That's not low-self-esteem talk. That's just reality. I had nothing to offer anyone, and I was needy as fuck. I couldn't even take care of myself properly, so I couldn’t expect random work friends to want to deal with my shit on top of everything they had going on."
Dr. Arthur was quiet for a moment. "And how do you feel today?"
"Better, I guess." I smiled and shook my head. “Nothing has actually changed, so I have no reason to feel better, but…everyone has been so nice that I kinda feel obligated to hang on a bit longer.”
"By everyone, do you mean Matt?”
“And you. And Jeanette from Woody’s.” Apparently, there were a few good people left in the world. People who noticed what I thought I was hiding.
I didn't tell him how nice it felt to wake up and have coffee waiting for me and have someone around who asked me what I needed. I didn't know how to explain that I was only sitting at this table right now because I didn't want to be rude to a man who'd loaned me a t-shirt and made me pancakes.
As pathetic as I was, my life was literally hanging on by a thread of politeness.
There was maybe something else too. Something I couldn’t say to Dr. Arthur. Especially since he was Matthew’s friend. But I did have something else to ask him. "Is it normal to feel like you want to stay alive for someone you just met?" I did my best to keep my voice neutral, but the twitch of his eyes might have been a cue that he heard what I was trying to keep to myself. "What I mean is, would it be wrong to stay alive because someone went to a lot of trouble to save me and I don't want to be rude about it."
