Mistakes & Misfortune
Throughout my practice I have realized that there are, psychologically speaking, two kinds of patients.
One sick for their mistakes.
One sick for their misfortune.
And I have realized that despite being, medically speaking, fucked up sideways by life due to no wrongdoing on their part, the latter group carry themselves better.
For they have accepted it.
...
Time kills most things. I always wondered if I would be able to love, if I lived for a thousand years. I would probably have forgotten what love is by then. But surprisingly, I was struck by the realization that it doesn't take that much time for it to kill hatred.
It takes the second group, the misfortunates, a few years most. They acquiesce and acclimate. Their anger eventually dies out, in a few years or a decade, and they continue on. They shrug in the end, and keep living with it. Their vitriol succumbs to time eventually.
The former however, not the misfortunate but the improvident, the ones that are sick for their lack of attention or self-care, or simply because of something they did wrong;
This universe simply cannot provide them enough time for them to forgive themselves.
They are distraught, cursed by the knowledge that their body would not be deteriorating rapidly now, if only they had acted differently.
– They killed their lungs and now cannot breathe without masks and oxygen tanks.
– They killed their kidneys and now are hooked up to machines for hours 3 times a week, for the rest of their remaining lives.
– They killed their livers and now they can't think straight half of the day, confused, knowing and not knowing at the same time that they are dying.
They killed themselves.
And they really wish they didn't.
Their voices carry a certain disdain as they talk.
Rarely do they confess to me that they shouldn't have done it. Rarely do they confess that they should have listened. But every time they speak, a sorrowful contempt hangs in the air.
In school my professors taught me of medications for infections that killed millions in centuries past.
Yet never they have taught me of a medication for regret.
I know how to restart a heart no longer beating,
Yet I don't know how to make my patients forgive themselves.
...
Sometimes as I drive home from work, exhausted, drained, and hungry, I wish to take the nearest exit and never go back. I realize that the black clouds are gathering over my head now, and I am too tired to disperse them.
Sometimes I come back home, feel every aching muscle in my legs as I stumble inside, and get in the shower.
And sometimes, as I let the steaming water run down my hair, down my face, then down my shoulders,
I regret.
I regret having chosen this.
I regret every death, every torn limb, every crushed bone, every failed organ, and every single tear I have seen.
I regret years and years of studying just to understand this machine, to understand how it works and to understand how to fix it,
Only to see them slowly die.
And I regret that it was not my misfortune,
But my mistake.
I am happy for all those people I have saved.
I have received letters from thankful fathers.
I have received hugs from wives that couldn't make sense of their emotions but only knew that they were happy.
I still keep a crude drawing of myself, drawn by a 7 year old artist in her hospital bed. And I have dried one of the flowers her mother gave me.
I am... only sorry for myself. I am just... so tired.
The sun shall die before me,
And maybe then I can forgive myself.
2026-06-21