Perhaps the world only sees the halo of the summit, never knowing that behind this spotlight lies a personal purgatory of body and mind that no one else can bear for you.
I did not passively endure this suffering; I actively chose to plunge into this path of thorns.
In the death zone of extreme hypoxia, every breath carries the dull ache of suffocation, turning a simple gasp into a luxury.
The brutal, relentless ascent on steep slopes drains my physical endurance to the absolute dregs. The violent, deep Khumbu cough tears through my lungs with every rattle, as if my organs are being ripped apart. The bone-chilling cold wraps around me, leaving my limbs numb, stiff, and constantly hovering on the precipice of hypothermia.
Yet, more brutal than the physical torture is the mental collapse and the raw terror of facing death.
The lack of oxygen stretches every night into an agonizing eternity—tossing, turning, completely sleepless, on the verge of cracking under sheer isolation and exhaustion.
Passing rumors of casualties along the trail, or even stumbling upon the frozen bodies of fallen climbers, forces death out of abstract text and into a cold, palpable reality right before my eyes.
Fear, despair, exhaustion, and agony pile on, layer after layer, pushing every single step to the brink of collapse. This is the raw, unvarnished reality of climbing Everest and Lhotse. There is no halo here. There is only the furnace.
But I have always believed: the deeper the reverence, the greater the fearlessness.
I willingly stepped into this hardship, choosing to “ask for it,” simply because I refuse to spend my entire life looking down, picking up the mundane sixpences of the world.
The halo of the summit will soon fade, but the bond of surviving this living hell together—the high-fives exchanged with teammates, the pieces of candy shared in the dark—and that fierce obsession with exhausting everything to touch the moon with my own hands…
That is life’s most precious medal. That is the ultimate account I give to myself.