"Waiting is painful, forgetting is painful, but not knowing wich to do is the worst kind of suffering"

-Paulo Coelho "By the river Piedra i sat down and wept"

It's cold. The floor is quite uncomfortable. I have no idea because I'm sitting here. I mean, there's a chair just across the aisle, so there's no more reason to sit here. I could simply get up and get in the comfortable chair before someone else comes and steals my place. Why am I sitting on the floor to begin with? I'm not sure. Surely it will have to do with the fact that I was told that the results of the exams would finally arrive between five and ten minutes. I guess I wanted to do as close as possible to the door of the office to not miss a single minute. But seriously, I would leave my comfort aside for only being ten seconds closer? I do not think so. It would be pretty stupid to be like that. But then that brings me to a bigger question. Why, instead of talking so much, do you get up and sit in the chair? I do not know. Really, no matter how cold the floor is, I really feel calm. I do not know if getting up could make everything worse. It will be better to stay here really. I do not want to risk more than I should. For example, that time when I almost had them expelled from the university. I clearly remember the director's face when they were asking me who the little marijuana pack they had found dumped in our bedroom was. Wow, what memories... I do not know if that can be compared to this. In those days he was a poor devil who was barely in his first year of engineering and now, ten years later, sitting on the floor of the hospital, impatiently waiting for the arrival of some bloody test results. Sitting on the floor, like a dog. I really should go to the chair. My back is already starting to hurt and I can not feel my legs. I don't know if it is one of the symptoms of the disease, already taking effect, or simply because of my bad posture. It could be one or the other, even a strange mixture of the two. If my memory does not fail me, I did not say anything in the booklet of back pains, but I did say some muscle pain in the extremities. I could not say clearly what is happening to me. My God, I can not be sure of anything anymore. One day be completely healthy and the next you can be infected with the most brutal diseases known to man. We live in a world where it's so common that out of nowhere appear different epidemics of all kinds almost anywhere without anyone noticing. I find it quite absurd considering that we live in a world where almost nothing can work without the highest technology. We live in a place where health systems have the best training to deal with all kinds of medical problems, but we still fail in some of the most basic things that I can think of. But in reality it isn't right to put all the fault solely to the medical system. All the corruption, violence, terrorism, bad governments and useless presidents must be taken into account. Better said, everything that has ruined our lives. I know it sounds quite pessimistic, but sometimes the truths hurts more than the lies. Although you also have to take into account that i might not have anything. In fact, it could be that I just got a fever and that's it. A small fever that would not take more than a week, although I could have become a hypochondriac and think that I was surely dying. It would not be the first time that happens to me. In the past, many times I have had to go through the panic of thinking that there was something extremely wrong with me: from that time i thought I could have cancer since I felt fuller after lunch or that I could be going crazy because I thought I had seen someone behind me when I was completely alone. Being honest, I do not know what's wrong with me. It could just be bad chemistry in my brain. Yes, that should explain everything. Because I'm going bald, because I'm fat, because I feel depressed, because my life to this day has been quite mediocre at it's best. I know there is something wrong with me, but I could not clearly say that. It is my mind, really. Since I have memory, she has liked to play games with me, making me suffer at every step. I should not be here, thinking about it. Maybe he should be locked in an asylum. My life has been so ... harmless. I have never done anything that I can be proud of. Everything is pretty mediocre or mundane. Go out to eat, chat with my colleagues, go from here to there working all day without stopping. I have never felt truly comfortable with everything. It's just boring. I think the biggest thing you could say that I've done in my life has been that time I won Christmas bingo in the office. It was a nice box of donuts, the prize. Truly if you can be proud to win food, there is something wrong with you. I've been bored of existing, that's really what I feel. I have been stuck in this rutine without stop doing the same things over and over again. Leave the keys on the desk, sweep the floor, sleep, read, eat, watch wrestling on television at two in the morning, have phone conversations with people as bored as I am. There is no point in continuing with this. I should leave here now. I should kill myself. There are no more reasons to continue with this. I could hang myself, although I'm not sure that the beams in the apartment can support my obese body. I could drown myself, although at these times of the year the river is always empty and I do not want to have to wait until winter. I could cut my veins, but the thing is, I would not want the last thing I felt in this world to be pain - not to mention the trail of blood I would leave in the tub. I think my best bet would really be to throw myself from a very high place. I could do it now, although I would never know the results of the exam. Also, I do not have anything to write about why I made that decision. Wait a second. Do I really have enough valid reasons to do it? I mean, my life without a doubt is not the best, but neither is it the worst. I did not have an absent father or an alcoholic mother or an abusive or negligent family or "friends" that ruined my childhood or an unfaithful wife or suffer from poverty, humiliation or illness. Well, let's put that last one aside while we wait. Then why would he take such a decision? I do not know, but should I? I should relax a little, really. My heart is beating fast in my chest and I am beginning to let my head start to imagine things. They range from the most absurd to the completely unimaginable. So, suicide? Lies. I think I've thought too much for today. What time is it? Those ten minutes should have already passed. How much I regret not having a watch with me right now. The unloaded cell phone, with the clock on my bedside table, wearing away little by little. Still nothing said. What is happening in there? Will it be a long time? What will happen if they say that the results were positive? Why do I always ask myself this kind of thing? It's as if I like to torture myself with these extravagant and dangerous ideas. Wondering so much is an effect of having so much free time. If I spent more time doing something, I would not have to live in such a state of panic in which I am constantly. I have to admit that I am the greatest procrastinator I have ever known. Always leaving things for the last possible moment. Since I had memory I had always done that and since then I have never been able to stop it. Maybe that's why I'm so unhappy. Maybe if I did not leave everything to the end I could finally be happy. I should try once, but I think I should do it little by little. Go forward until finally have a schedule for each of my days. So at last I will not have time to torture myself with everything I think. Possibly someday I will achieve it, but until that moment finally arrives there is nothing else to do. Now that I think about it, I would not really know what to do if the results come back positive. Well, better be late than never. Maybe I'm still early enough to try to stop the progress of the disease, although I'm not sure. I have not really seen if it was lethal or not. At this moment I am really regretting that I did not look hard enough. I could suffer from an incurable disease, without treatment, whose life expectancy is only a couple of weeks and I still would not know it. If I had made the decision to spend less time wandering around, I could have known more and more about what could be happening to me. I could have planned things, talk to my loved ones about what was happening, start looking for help, even write my will or something. There is no point in worrying after everything that has happened. If I'm going to die, all I want to do is put all my things in order. Do not leave anything unfinished. Although I really believe that I started doing it quite late. Now that I have this moment to reflect, I can see all the mistakes I have made in all these thirty years. I had never before thought about everything that I wish would be different. Every wrong decision, every mistake, every lie, every time I got the worst out of me. I had never felt too guilty about all these kinds of things, but at this moment I feel all the guilt that has been accumulating all my life suddenly coming upon me and crushing me. Every time I made a mistake, it comes to my mind just to remind me of those times when I did wrong. I do not consider myself a perfect person (in fact, I think no one can believe in perfection once they reach adolescence) but at this time I could not feel more miserable. I feel horrendous, disgusted with myself for being so horrible, for having hurt so many people, both unintentionally and with all the clearest intention. Without a doubt I was not a model person, in fact, quite the opposite. I am not sure if I will go to heaven or hell when I die from that disease that harasses me. Possibly it is in the middle, cleaning me of all the bad that I have done. I do not know and I'm really worried about that fact. Telling the truth, I have never believed in God, but at this moment I panic about that little detail. Not so much because of the fear of that eternal punishment they talk so much about, but more of the possibility of it happening. The way I see it, it's more like a lottery. It could be that it does not exist and at last that is the end of everything, although what really scares me the most is the possibility that it exists. The only way to finally know it would be at the end of my days, but at that time there would be no turning back. It would be to bet everything at once. Although also something that worries me is that I have not managed to live my life to its full potential. That my life has only been one of the thousands of ways in which things could have happened. Undoubtedly being the most boring way to do it. I have my complete free will and I am only responsible for my actions and everything that has happened to me. So the fact that I was so dissatisfied with my life is completely and entirely my fault? Sadly, the answer is yes. I could have done so many things that I rejected at the end either because of cowardice or shame or simple physical laziness. It could have been someone famous and internationally recognized. I could have followed my dreams. I could have accomplished so many things, but in the end I only became a vagabond with a job I hate, a girlfriend who, although she does not know that I know, has been quite unfaithful to me over the years and a void inside my soul that can never be filled ... God, I should stop worrying so much about that. I worry about so many things at the same time that I can not finish a complete idea without jumping to another out of nowhere. I have never managed to finish something, maybe that has to do with my sadness of life. I should have finished that novel that I decided to write during that summer vacation in university, I should have said yes when she proposed marrige to me, I should have gone more partying in my youth, I should have danced and singed more, I should have tried going out with more girls, maybe even trying with some guy, I should have had sex, I should have married, I should have been more open with what I thought, I should have studied more, I should have tried more things, I should have lived more, Take advantage of my brief existence to the fullest. So many things I can never do and now the only thing I can do is sit here and cry. Crying for so many failed opportunities, so many times that I did not do what my heart wanted. I am truly guilty of the worst possible crime that a human being could commit: never risk in life. Everything is over. I reached the end of the line. To the last paragraph that makes up that book that is my life. I'll just have to wait and see, suddenly if those results could save me from that cruel fate that awaits me at the end of the tunnel. Possibly, nothing you have done in the end will matter. That everything is after all a bad joke that is repeated again and again. That in the end it is like when one ends a program: that the credits appear and then a black screen without anything more. Or that maybe everything has a greater meaning. Maybe we all be only a small part of that huge movie that would be life. A character in that huge world full of good and evil. That our life is just like a thread that is entangled, sometimes unconsciously, with the thousands of threads of the other people who live around us. I really do not think I'll ever find the real answer to this question. The question that has driven so many philosophers mad. From Plato to Nietzsche, nobody has been able to give a completely valid answer to this question. Not even religion is capable of answering it. I guess the only thing to do about it sit down and wait...

-the doctor is ready to see you- the nurse said to him, in her white uniform with a robe and with her melodious, barely letting herself be seen through the silent opening of the office door next to him. Without thinking twice, he got up and left, in the direction of his inevitable destiny.