A Matter of Fact

To write what is on one’s heart is not exactly an easy thing to do. It’s easier to write a piece of fiction based on facts to try to tell the story that needs to be told, rather than tell it exactly as it happened. It’s easier because you can choose to leave out the hard parts, or make the good parts seem not so good, depending on what you want the reader to feel when he or she picks up your work. Most of the time fact based fiction is written in order to be more interesting or more emotion provoking than the real instance actually was. Or maybe it’s just that the writer cannot see how great the story is in its entirety and its rawness that he or she feels the need to add embellishment despite the fact embellishment isn’t needed.
I have a friend. I know that generally people say that they “have this friend, who has done such and such, or thinks this and that,” and really they are just talking about themselves, but this isn’t like that. I have a friend, and he’s in a dark place. He has tried to take his own life three times now. The reason he hasn’t succeeded? That would be God. There’s just no other explanation for why he is still alive. He shouldn’t be, he should at least have major damage to his body due to his major drug abuse, but he doesn’t. And granted, that has made him rather ticked, but I’ll take him ticked over dead any day.
The problem is, despite the fact that another friend of his and my-self have tried to get him to realize that he is meant to be here on this earth, he just doesn’t believe that. He has convinced himself, through lying to himself, that he isn’t supposed to be here. How do you change a person’s beliefs? If someone is set in believing something, especially if that person is stubborn and closed minded, how do you change their mindset? Is it even possible?
And if it isn’t possible, then how are we supposed to help keep him alive? Aside from keeping him in a hospital bed with sedatives and a feeding tube? It would appear that whether he lives or dies is up to him entirely. So how are we supposed to convince him that he needs to choose life over death? I feel entirely helpless. And I’m fighting against feeling entirely hopeless. Emotionally, it’s draining. But again, I would choose to be emotionally drained because he is still alive, than find out one morning that he has chosen to end life.