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How do you live with yourself?

On today’s episode of Grey’s Anatomy, my guy killed a woman.

Okay, maybe “killed” sounds a little harsh, but that’s exactly how Derek Shepherd saw it.

Of all the surgeons in the series, Derek is the attending I absolutely love. Yes, he has a fine face and good hair, but aside from that, he is a badass surgeon. Literally a mini god in the OR, a world class neurosurgeon who seems to know exactly what he’s doing every single time.

So there was this particular surgery. It wasn’t some impossible, never-before-seen procedure, it was a simple surgery, one of those procedures they do so often that, at some point, you probably could do it with your eyes closed.

Derek was confident she would live, but surgery is surgery. Things can go wrong, even when you have done everything right, she developed complications and eventually died.

And that broke him.

It was painful and personal, and somehow Derek couldn’t separate the fact that she died from the feeling that he had failed her.

That was how he entered the rabbit hole.

He gave up on being a surgeon, quit the hospital, quit his relationship, started drinking. For someone who had always seemed so sure of himself, watching him completely fall apart was heartbreaking.

Because this is Derek Shepherd. Freaking McDreamy.

And yet, underneath the god complex, the confidence, the brilliant hands and the reputation, he was still just a human being who had made a mistake, or at least believed he had.

Dearest reader, watching this episode had me thinking about how, at the end of the day, we are all human.

Nobody is beyond mistakes, nobody is so good at what they do that nothing can ever go wrong. Sometimes, despite your experience, your preparation, your good intentions and everything you thought you knew, something still goes terribly wrong.

And perhaps the hardest part isn’t even what happened, it is learning how to live with yourself after it happens.

I think it is okay to put down the scalpel for a while when you feel like you’re drowning. It is okay to step away, to grieve, to admit that you cannot carry it right now.

You can drop the scalpel without throwing away your hands, and when it becomes okay enough to live with yourself again, you can pick it back up.

@favvy_Okwans🖤