Every day for the past two years, on top of the other things perpetually clouding my thoughts, I'll think about that day in 2016. When I had the shotgun pointed at my heart and actually managed to pull the trigger.

I was 14, didn't know much about how guns worked, I found the shotgun and it was cocked. I pulled the trigger on myself, and found out the hard way that it wasn't loaded. It was cocked, but it wasn't loaded.

I regret it. Every singe day, I regret the fact that I didn't succeed. I just couldn't have had an easy exit when I knew it was the best time to leave. I had to remain, and everything had to continue the way it has.

I saw it all coming a million miles away. Everything had to get worse. I had to discover things that emotionally drain me enough for me to physically injure myself without pain. Prolonged and unending ghosts haunting me and sapping life of all the meaning it once had to me. Things that no one could really care about. No one could ever fix either, least of all me.

Now I'm too scared to take my life. I want to shoot myself, and I point a gun at my head on a weekly basis, but I can't do it. But I can't continue living, it's not an option. If only the gun was actually loaded, I wouldn't have had to experience any of this. I couldn't have just ended with the perpetual passive envy I had before. I had to survive, and it had to evolve. I just had to find the version of me who didn't fail.

I want the cycle to end.