I sat on the hospital bed like a shell of a man. Empty. Lost. Pathetic.
Everything that ever mattered to me was gone. The words I wanted to say… they stayed locked inside my throat. I looked down at my hands, trembling slightly, and whispered to myself:
"Is this really what I wanted?"
But my heart already knew the answer:
No.
This wasn't what I wanted at all.
But then came the harder questions.
Can I fix things?
Can someone like me truly start over—from nothing?
Or have I broken too much to be forgiven?
Questions with no answers. And no one to ask… except the same pathetic man who'd brought all this on himself.
I lay back in the hospital bed, drained, and slowly closed my eyes.
And once again—I was outside my body.
Hovering. Watching.
There I was, lying unconscious, a man who never learned how to love. A man who punished mistakes instead of understanding them. A man who never once said "I'm sorry" and meant it.
To my left, I heard quiet footsteps.
I knew those legs. That calm presence.
David.
He stood beside me, watching. I couldn't look him in the eye. Not after he saw everything. He probably hated me now—and honestly, I wouldn't blame him.
Who could love a failure like me?
But instead of judgment, his hand gently rested on my back. And he said, softly:
"Listen, John… nobody in this world is perfect. We're human. We were made to fail. To make mistakes. We're not gods—we're people. And we learn from the things we break."
I stayed silent. His voice was calm, but every word struck something deep inside me.
"You want to know what keeps us going?" he continued. "It's mistakes. They're the lessons we pass on, the pain that teaches us to do better next time. If people were perfect, we wouldn't need help. We wouldn't need each other. But we do."
His hand didn't move. He wasn't lecturing me—he was grounding me.
"You tried to build a perfect life," David said. "But you built it only around yourself. You wanted what was best for you, not for the people around you. And I'm not telling you this to shame you—I'm telling you because it might save your life."
I still didn't speak. But I felt it. Everything he said was true.
Then he asked, more gently this time:
"John… what made you choose perfection over love? What made you think pain was the right path? Who taught you to become this man?"
And finally, I opened my mouth. My voice came out low and bitter.
"People I never should've looked up to…"