He had known, ever since the hospital, that it was impossible to convince

someone to live for his own sake. But he often thought it would be a more

effective treatment to make people feel more urgently the necessity of living for

others: that, to him, was always the most compelling argument. The fact was, he

did owe Harold. He did owe Willem. And if they wanted him to stay alive, then

he would. At the time, as he slogged through day after day, his motivations had

been murky to him, but now he could recognize that he had done it for them, and

that rare selflessness had been something he could be proud of after all. He

hadn’t understood why they wanted him to stay alive, only that they had, and so he had done it.

Eventually, he had learned how to rediscover contentment, joy,

even. But it hadn’t begun that way.

And now he is once again finding life more and more difficult, each day a

little less possible than the last. In his every day stands a tree, black and dying,

with a single branch jutting to its right, a scarecrow’s sole prosthetic, and it is

from this branch that he hangs. Above him a rain is always misting, which

makes the branch slippery. But he clings to it, as tired as he is, because beneath

him is a hole bored into the earth so deep that he cannot see where it ends. He is

petrified to let go because he will fall into the hole, but eventually he knows he

will, he knows he must: he is so tired. His grasp weakens a bit, just a little bit,

with every week.

 

 

Profoundly overwhelming. I couldn’t stop reading — still can’t get enough of it….