I looked into the mirror, uncomfortable with what I saw. My now pale and ghostly skin glistened before me. I slowly made my way up to my face and set my eyes upon the scar upon my left cheek hesitantly. The scar that continuously served as a hindrance. The line upon my face that matches the scars upon my wrists that I usually hid.  My long, brown hair threatened to cover up my matching, brown eyes and lay arranged sporadically across my head. The lines around my eyes looked weary, worn down from the tears that frequently interrupted my life. Sweat poured down my face.

I hated what I saw in front of me. No. I despised it. It was everything I didn’t want to see, revealing uncomfortable truths that hurt more than the times I would take the blade to my wrists and draw a bloodied line. That pain was temporary, a relief, but this was something else entirely. It was the concepts that plagued me continually. The ones that circled around over and over in my mind. The ones that held no relief in sight.

I looked at the glass in front of me. It seemed that it was melting, becoming a swirl of memories. The mirror revealed to me a little boy afraid of the dark, afraid of confronting his parents for fear of the backlash he would receive. The classmates who ignored him in the hall. Invisible. Always invisible. Except for the snickers and the whispering, and the laughter that always emanated among the hallways that was most certainly aimed in my direction. I couldn’t escape the pressure from school… from what society expects. I couldn’t escape the torment. The pounding, the aching in my head. Let them see me now. Let them see what invisible really is. A voice, a sound, an echo, a reminder you can’t see and one you can never ever shake.

I made eye contact with my reflection. A life full of secrets, a life full of pain. My hand shook as I raised the gun up to my head.