The things that should have been and the things I should have done have always haunted me.  Mistakes compounded upon mistakes make up a base that is far too weak to properly hold.  It was all bound to collapse eventually.  

I just wish it didn’t end so violently.

I lived my life full of regrets, each one plaguing my thoughts until all I could think about was how horrible of a person I have become.  No matter how hard I tried I found I couldn’t change.

I couldn’t change for myself, and I couldn’t even change for the people who loved me the most.

The disappointment my mother must have felt, a son with a promising future thrown away because of his inability to be better.  She showered me with love and support and I had thrown it all away.  She had taught me all I know, with the expectation that I would do great things.

She always seemed to know everything, every concept, every idea imaginable at the tip of her tongue, always 

I am a waste of space.

She deserves a better son, one who could shower her with love and wealth.  One who could reach for the stars and find them in the palm of their hand.  One that is deserving of all her love.  Not a wretch like me.

I curse God everyday that I was born upon her.

I thank God everyday that I was born to her.

I never took for granted what he sacrificed for me, my countless shortcomings were always shored up by him.  I never expected anything from my father, and yet he was always there.

I do not deserve him.

It is to my deep shame and regret that I also have a father.  A strong man, kinder and far wiser than I am.  When he looks into my eyes I am sure that he sees the true nature of my soul, a disgusting rot that should be cut out.  

I will never forget his smile, the way it seems to fill a room with its warmth, the way that if you just believe hard enough, everything will be alright.  

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My greatest heights have been achieved off the back of my father, when all my admission letters came back as rejected it was he who talked to them and got them to accept me into their halls.  When I was on the edge of expulsion for not even meeting the bare academic standards it was my father who talked them out of it.

I am sure he hates me for being weak.

I would not blame him for hating me.

It is for my love of them both that I stand upon this ledge, looking down at the black waters below causes me to feel dizzy.  I have never been afraid of heights but the view from my perch holds my heart in an icy grip that I cannot shake.  My heart beats two times too fast and my breathing goes raggedy and uneven.

I am afraid.

It is a long way down.

For a moment I hesitate, hundreds of reasons come to mind of why I should stop this foolishness, the devastation my parents would feel, the culmination of my life's work ending here, the nothingness.

 And yet thousands of reasons more of why it must be done flood into my mind, a whirlwind of half thoughts and images flashing through so fast I can barely focus on one.  

My thoughts slow down, a raging tornado reduced to a gentle breeze.  My rapid panting slowly settles down into what could be normal.

All I can hear is the sound of my heartbeat.

It is a long way down, but I have been falling all my life.

—----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I have always believed in God, for something to be out there always watching and looking out for had seemed comforting to my younger self.  When I grew up all it did was add another being that I would have disappointed.

I had always thought that if I had ever met God I would ask him the perfect way to live, the best way to make my parents proud and not end up as a failure.

Looking at him now, my mind is clear.

He is the tiniest structure in the world, so infinitesimally small that you could take a grain of sand and it would be the size of the universe compared to him.  So small that he could stand upon a quark and behold the universe as if he was upon a planet 

He is gigantic, the universe in its ever expanding size would be just an ant next to him, waiting to be squashed.  He is too big, the sheer scale of his enormity sends my mind into a spiral merely trying to comprehend it.

He is a square.  He is a mesmerizing fractal with patterns that shape the earth.  He is a mass of cosmic dust where stars are born and die in seconds.  He is a black hole ever consuming and ever hungry. 

He is everything.

He is nothing.

He is man.

It is in this realm of cannot and should not that I am.  I cannot speak, I cannot feel, so I should not be.  Yet I am here to witness.  As he has witnessed me.

He knows me, all that I am and that I could have been.

He knows every answer I could give.

But, he asks, not with a voice that speaks, but with a thought that every fiber of my being hears.

“?”

Yes, I want to be what I could not.

I want to be the best.  I want people to love me.  I want people who I have never met to toast my name and bless the day I was born.  I want to do what I could not in my first life.  I want my dream to be realized.  I want my parents to be proud of me.  I want to be proud of myself.

I want to be the best damned doctor to ever exist.

“.”

And thus I was given the tools to be so.

And I fucked it all up once again.