If you ever want to know how a man's life ends, don't imagine some grand tragedy.
No music.
No slow-motion tears.
No heroic last words.
For people like me, it usually ends with bad lighting, cheap furniture, and a body that finally gives up after years of being treated like trash.
That was how it happened.
I was sitting in front of my computer, playing a game like I had done a thousand times before. My room was a disaster. My chair was uncomfortable. My back was already protesting. And my character on screen was in the middle of some dramatic battle that mattered far more than my own life at that moment.
Then the pain came.
At first, I thought it was the usual discomfort. The kind you ignore and pretend is normal because being an adult means accepting that everything hurts for no reason.
But this was different.
This was the kind of pain that makes your brain stop making jokes.
I pressed a hand against my side and instantly regretted it.
"Ah—"
My breath cut off. My body stiffened. Cold sweat broke out across my skin.
Great.
Just great.
Of all the times my body could betray me, it chose this exact moment. Really rude timing, honestly. If you are going to kill me, at least let me finish the level first.
I pushed myself up from the chair, but my legs shook like they were made of jelly. The room wobbled in front of me. My vision blurred.
"Medicine," I muttered, trying to sound calm. I failed. "Where the hell is the medicine?"
The apartment looked like the inside of a man who had stopped caring a long time ago.
Clothes on the floor.
Empty bottles on the desk.
Cold food I had forgotten to throw out.
A dirty cup with something brown stuck to the bottom.
You know, the usual signs of a thriving young man.
I reached for the drawer.
Another wave of pain hit me so hard my knees gave out.
"Shit!"
I fell hard.
My shoulder struck the floor, then my side, and for a second I saw nothing but white. I lay there gasping like a fish tossed out of water by a very angry god.
The game was still running on the screen.
My character was still swinging a sword.
Still alive.
Still fighting.
Meanwhile, I was on the floor of my apartment, dying like a loser.
I gave a weak laugh through clenched teeth.
Pathetic.
That word fit me better than most people ever did.
But before I tell you how I ended up there, let me start from the beginning.
Because honestly, my life has always been one long joke with a terrible punchline.
I was born unwanted.
That is not me trying to sound dramatic. That is just the truth.
I didn't know my parents. Never saw their faces. Never heard a bedtime story from them. Never got scolded for breaking something. Never got hugged for doing well at school.
What I got was an orphanage.
Apparently, that was my welcome gift to the world.
No note. No explanation. No tears from anyone who left me behind.
Just a baby wrapped in thin cloth and dropped at the gate like someone had forgotten to take out the trash.
A fine start, really.
The orphanage was not cruel in the movie-villain way. No evil laughter. No secret basement. No dramatic storms outside the windows every time someone suffered.
It was just cold.
Ordinary cold.
The kind that doesn't scream at you, but slowly teaches you not to expect anything.
There were beds. Meals. Rules. Caretakers with tired faces. Children everywhere, each of us carrying our own invisible little disaster.
Some cried.
Some fought.
Some laughed too loudly, like noise could scare away loneliness.
I mostly stayed quiet.
Not because I was wise.
Not because I was deep.
I was just there.
The sort of child people forget to look at twice.
The other kids played in groups. They shouted, ran, laughed, stole toys, made up games, and chose favorites like life was a contest I had already lost before it began.
I tried joining once.
One of them looked at me and said, "No. He's boring."
Boring.
That word followed me for years.
Maybe they were right.
I wasn't funny. I wasn't loud. I wasn't brave. I wasn't the kind of child who could walk into a room and make people smile.
I was the kid in the corner reading a book while everyone else played outside.
Books were easier.
They didn't care if I was awkward. They didn't ignore me. They didn't leave.
So I read.
Then I studied.
Then I kept studying because there was nothing else to do.
And somewhere along the way, studying turned into my only real skill.
If I couldn't be loved, maybe I could at least be useful.
That was my first life lesson.
A depressing one, sure, but a lesson all the same.
School was where I started to look impressive from the outside.
That's the funny thing about people. They see results and think they understand the story.
Good grades? Smart.
Top of the class? Hardworking.
Got into a good university? Lucky.
Got a good job? Successful.
They never ask what it cost.
Maybe because they don't really want the answer.
I worked hard because I was afraid.
Afraid of going back to nothing.
Afraid of being forgotten.
Afraid of being the kind of man who disappears without anyone noticing.
So I kept going.
Middle school.
High school.
Entrance exams.
Late nights.
Early mornings.
More books. More tests. More pressure.
The future finally opened up, and for a moment I thought maybe life was going to be kind to me.
I got into a good university.
One of the best.
People patted my shoulder and told me I should be proud.
I smiled and nodded, because that's what people do when they don't know how to feel.
Inside, I was still the same kid from the orphanage.
Just wearing better clothes.
After that came the job.
A good one.
The kind people envy when they hear about it at family gatherings.
Stable.
Well-paid.
Respectable.
The sort of job that makes parents say, "See? That child turned out well."
Too bad nobody told my heart that success was supposed to feel good.
The truth was, work ate me alive.
Not all at once.
That would have been merciful.
It happened slowly.
Deadlines.
Meetings.
Calls.
Emails.
Tasks that never ended.
Bosses who said "just one more thing" like they were asking for a glass of water instead of another chunk of your soul.
Wake up.
Work.
Eat something terrible.
Work more.
Sleep badly.
Repeat.
And repeat.
And repeat.
At first I handled it.
Then I endured it.
Then I survived it.
Then I stopped noticing the difference.
That's how burnout works, by the way.
It doesn't explode. It erodes.
Piece by piece, it eats the part of you that still believes life is supposed to mean something.
Soon I stopped laughing.
Then I stopped sleeping properly.
Then I stopped caring about small things.
Then I stopped feeling like a person and started feeling like a machine that was running out of oil.
That's when depression moved in.
Not with fireworks.
Not with a dramatic speech.
It came quietly.
Like rain leaking through a cracked roof.
Like a room slowly filling with smoke.
At night, I'd lie in bed staring at the ceiling and wonder if this was really it.
Study. Work. Die.
Very efficient.
Very modern.
Very stupid.
Then she came into my life.
My girlfriend.
The first person who made the world feel less gray.
She was warm in a way I wasn't used to.
Easy to talk to.
Easy to smile with.
She laughed at my dry jokes, which was already a miracle. Most people just looked at me like I had malfunctioned.
"You really are weird," she said once, grinning.
I remember looking at her and saying, "That's rude."
She shrugged. "It's true."
And I laughed.
Actually laughed.
Not the fake kind.
The real kind.
For a while, I thought maybe my life had finally decided to stop being cruel.
We spent time together.
Talked late into the night.
Shared meals.
Shared silence.
She noticed when I was tired.
She noticed when I was lying.
"You look like you're one bad day away from collapsing," she said once.
I smiled. "That's just my face."
She gave me that look people give when they know you're full of nonsense but don't hate you for it.
And that was enough.
For a while, I felt human.
For a while, I thought maybe I had found something worth holding on to.
Then work got worse.
Stress got worse.
I got worse.
I came home exhausted, empty, and irritated by everything. I stopped explaining myself. She stopped asking.
Not because she didn't care.
Because caring too much for someone who keeps disappearing in front of you is exhausting.
I know that now.
I didn't know it then.
One day she looked at me and said, "We need to talk."
That sentence has never once meant something good.
Never.
Not in movies. Not in life. Not in my life, at least.
She was sitting across from me, hands folded, eyes tired.
And I already knew.
That was the worst part.
I already knew.
"I can't keep doing this," she said quietly.
I blinked at her. "Doing what?"
"This," she said. "Us. You. Everything. You're never really here anymore."
I wanted to argue.
I wanted to tell her she was wrong.
I wanted to say I was trying, that I was tired, that I was drowning and she was the only thing keeping my head above water.
But when you've been failing for too long, even the honest words come out broken.
"I'm working hard," I said.
She gave me a sad smile.
"I know."
That was worse than anger.
Because anger means there's still fire.
Sadness means the fire is already out.
She left after that.
No screaming.
No dramatic goodbye.
No rain pouring outside like the universe was trying to be poetic.
Just a closed door.
And silence.
I sat there for a long time, staring at that door like maybe it would open again if I waited long enough.
It didn't.
After that, I got worse.
Of course I did.
People always say "don't let one thing ruin your life," as if life is some neat stack of pieces that can be arranged politely.
One thing breaks. Then another. Then another.
And suddenly you're standing in the middle of the wreckage wondering when exactly you became the wreckage.
I started drinking.
Just a little at first.
A way to sleep.
A way to stop thinking.
A way to blur the edges of the day until it hurt less.
Then a little became a habit.
Habit became dependency.
Dependency became something I pretended was normal.
Games helped too.
In games, I could fight.
In games, I could level up.
In games, effort actually led somewhere.
Imagine that.
A world where hard work gives a reward.
What a luxury.
Meanwhile, real life kept dragging me deeper.
The drinking got worse.
My health got worse.
My mood got worse.
And then my body finally decided to file a complaint.
The doctor said one word.
Cirrhosis.
I remember staring at him, trying to act like I understood what was happening, even though inside my head I was just thinking: that sounds expensive.
He explained it.
Liver damage.
Serious damage.
The kind that comes from too much drinking, too much neglect, too many years of treating your body like it was replaceable.
He told me to stop drinking.
To rest.
To follow treatment.
To take things seriously.
I nodded like a good patient.
Then I went home and did absolutely nothing useful.
Because that's what people like me do.
We hear the warning and think we still have time.
We always think we still have time.
I didn't.
The pain came back stronger that night.
I was playing again.
Of course I was.
What else would I be doing? Facing reality?
Please.
That would require energy.
Then my side twisted.
I froze.
My fingers slipped from the mouse.
The screen blurred.
I remember thinking, very calmly at first, that maybe I had just sat wrong.
Then the pain punched through me again and made that thought look stupid.
I tried to stand.
My legs buckled.
I grabbed the desk.
My body stiffened.
My breath stopped halfway in.
"Medicine…" I whispered.
I remember looking around with the stupid hope of a man who still believes his suffering might be interrupted by something as simple as a pill.
The room was exactly where I had left it.
Messy.
Quiet.
Pathetic.
I reached for the drawer.
Fell.
Crawled.
Failed again.
That's how close I came to saving myself.
A few inches.
Maybe less.
And I couldn't even manage that.
I lay on the floor with one hand stretched toward the desk like some tragic painting nobody would ever hang on a wall.
The game was still running.
My character was still alive.
I wasn't.
Funny how that works.
The floor felt colder.
My breathing became smaller.
My thoughts started drifting apart at the edges.
And then, because my life apparently liked cruel timing, the memories came back.
Not pretty memories.
Not happy ones.
My whole life.
The orphanage.
The silence.
The studying.
The job.
The girl who once smiled at me like I mattered.
The bottles.
The sickness.
The way I had kept saying "later" until later ran out.
And that's when I understood something.
My life had never really been about losing everything.
It had been about never quite having enough to lose in the first place.
No family.
No real childhood.
No peace.
No health.
No love that lasted.
Just one long stretch of being used, broken, and left behind.
If you ask me whether I was angry at the world, I'd say no.
Angry takes energy.
I was just tired.
So tired that even fear had begun to feel far away.
I closed my eyes.
The room vanished.
The pain faded.
Or maybe it didn't fade.
Maybe I simply stopped belonging to my body.
Then came the dark.
Not empty dark.
Waiting dark.
The kind that makes you feel something is about to happen, even if you have no idea what.
And then I saw it.
Words.
Floating in front of me like some ridiculous message from a system, a game, a god, or maybe the universe finally deciding to answer after ignoring me for my entire life.
[System Initiating...]
I stared at it.
Not because I understood.
Because I didn't.
Then the next line appeared.
[Compatibility Confirmed.]
I almost laughed.
Of course.
Of all the people in the world, the universe picked the drunk, broken, liver-failing failure lying on a dirty apartment floor.
Great taste.
Then the final line came.
Slow.
Calm.
Unforgiving.
[Welcome to Another World.]