It took seven years of therapy for me to recognize that the gaping wound in my heart is not the child of grief or exhaustion, but of a life un-lived. I have made no great mistakes or spoken the silent, shamed words of “I should not have done that.” I have not done anything. My emotional destruction has been predicated on loss, trauma, and frustration. I wish it was the result of having my heart broken by someone I was in love with, or being stuck in a cycle of taking drugs that will damage my brain by thirty, or spending money under the false notion that I have a six-figure salary. At least I would have proof I could endure risk and confront it with confident uncertainty.