Warning: This story contains disturbing situations, drug use and sexual conduct. This is a mature story so be forwarned.

When you cock the gun back and pull the trigger, the bullet flies, on average, at a speed of 1100 feet per second. That means it only takes 0.0009 seconds to move a foot. In that time, a bullet would go through a person's brain and out the back of their head. 0.0009 seconds is not a lot of time at all. That is probably a deciding factor when someone decides to end their life with a gun. It will be quick and painless. Everything will be over in less then a second.

Unfortunately, that 0.0009 seconds is stretched. I found that out the hard way. It's stretched long enough for you to think extensively about your life. It was as the bullet just came out of the gun when I started to think about what had gotten me into this situation. My life was a roller coaster of highs and lows.

It's so simple growing up. At the time you have no cares at all. Looking back it went by too fast. That was the first time I met my friend, Chris. We were inseparable during our childhood. We even became blood brothers. It was out back of my parent's house, in the woods. We used butter knives we had sneaked out of the house. I think my mom was suspicious about us both needing band aides, but she didn't say anything. Just fixed us up and gave us ice cream.

My mom was great like that. She always understood that boys had to make their own mistakes. She even cleaned me up the first time I ever got drunk. She told me that she wasn't going to yell at me, because spending the night hugging the toilet was enough of a punishment.

My dad on the other hand was never home. He used to take extensive business trips to god knows where. When he wasn't on a trip, he was in the office most of the time. He would go in early and come home late. I think out of a year, we ate about four meals together, that is it. One on Christmas, and then one on each of our birthdays. He made good money though; we were never bad off. I think mom longed for more, but she made due.

It was in eighth grade when I first experienced how cruel life can be. My dog Chuck died. It wasn't a pleasant death either. He didn't close his eyes and go to sleep one night and not wake up. A speeding car hit him. Right in front of me. I ran over, and picked him up. At the time he had already died, but I didn't care. I wanted him to be alive, so I took him home with me.

After the ten-minute walk home, I was covered in Chuck's blood. I got home and yelled for my mother. I will never forget the look on her face when she came out of the house and saw me holding the limp remains of Chuck. It took her an hour to convince me that there was nothing that the vet could do for him and that we should just put him to rest.

She dug the grave for me, while kept holding Chuck. The tears were streaming down my face as I laid him in the grave. I choked out a prayer and through some dandelions on him. It took another hour to get me cleaned up. My mother threw away the clothes. It was quite all right with me. She didn't want to have to clean them, and I didn't want to be reminded of that horrible day.

About this time the gun was starting to kick back. The barrel smashed into my front teeth, cracking them. The bullet pushed into the roof of my mouth. It didn't hurt too much, more like a pinch. I started to think about college.

I graduated from high school with all my friends. I was going to a college that no one else in my class was going to. This was the first time that I was going to be away from everyone, even Chris. He was going to Community College. I ventured out into the world on my own. I packed my stuff up and went off, not knowing what I wanted to do with my future.

It was at college where I furthered my knowledge in many areas. I learned a lot more about alcohol, drugs and women. I was slowly slipping away. I started not to care about school, or what I wanted to do in life. I was having a great time: getting drunk every night, having sex all the time, and even trying every drug I could get my hands on. I don't know why I did this. It might have stemmed from my childhood.

I entered my sophomore year and still had no clue what I wanted to do with my life. Well, I knew that all I wanted to do was to just party all the time. My downward spiral continued at full force. I was slowly becoming an alcoholic and a junkie. I was moving away from pot and shrooms and moving towards heroin and blow. I was flying high while my grades were dropping. I was on a one way ticket to expulsion. What made it even worse was that I was running out of money. I had many jobs, but I couldn't keep any of them. I started turning to selling drugs. That way I could get the drugs for basically free and make a profit off of it.

It was as the bullet dug into the lower part of my brain when I thought about the next big tragedy of my life.

I was lying on my couch, soaring on cocaine when the phone rang. It was my father. I hadn't talked to him, or really seen him since I started college. Whenever I was home on breaks he was usually out on business. His voice was shaking when he talked to me.

"Son," He said. It was foreign sounding. He had never called me son before. "I have some bad news."

At this time, all that was happening wasn't registering. The thought of bad news just didn't enter my mind. I didn't worry about what the bad news was; I was too hopped up.

"Your mother is dead."

And that's when it all came crashing down. My life paused. Everything stopped, except for my racing heart. I could just hear the loud thumping coming out of my chest.

My mind started to race just as fast as my heart. I was thinking, 'this must be a joke. This little prick calls me for the first time in two years to tell me this? My mother isn't dead; he's just lying to me'.

I don't know why I thought that, but I did. All of a sudden, time came crashing back and I asked, "What?"

"Your mother died in a car accident today. She was dead on the spot."

I was beginning to hate cars. They took away the two things I loved the most. I was taking deep breaths, trying to calm myself down from the drugs and the news. I was trying to grip onto reality while slipping into surrealism. My world was starting to spin.

I went home for the funeral. It was the longest weekend of my life. A closed casket was the only thing that held me from seeing my mother one final time. During the wake and the service, all I wanted to do was to rip open the casket and pull my mother out. I kept envisioning my mother, lying asleep in there. I wanted her to wake up.

I went home with my father but he didn't stay for long. Again he left on a business trip. I was beginning to see that those trips where his escape from reality. He had done that for most of my life. It seems that so many times when I needed him, he would be somewhere else. One week he'd be in Chicago, the next week he'd be in LA. When he was in town, he'd be at work till all hours. Now, when I needed him the most, he took his frequent flyer miles and flew to San Francisco. Once he was gone, I turned to something else for comfort, and took my escape from reality.

It's said that the human body has an amazing ability to withstand seemingly impossible situations. There I was, hopped up on a pharmacy of drugs. I was trying a speedball at the moment. Taking speed and horse tranquilizers to counter act the effects. On top of that, I had been drinking a wide variety of liquor. By all accounts, alone the toxins in me should have well killed me, but they didn't. What is even more amazing was the fact that I decided that it was a good idea to jump in my car and go for a joy ride.

Amazingly I stopped at my good friend Chris's house to say hi. If I hadn't, I probably wouldn't be here right now (ending my life). I had fallen a bit out of touch with Chris. He didn't know that my life was held together by which combination of drugs I was into from week to week. It was lucky for me though, that Chris was smart enough to realize that I was in no condition to drive. He took me into his house and took care of me till I came down. He didn't know what I was on, because I wouldn't tell him. I'm still not sure whether he would have called 911 if I told him what I was on.

When I finally woke up, good old Chris was right there with a cup of coffee. I broke down and told him everything that I had done and everything I was into. It was my fear that he would hate me or think less of me for the shit that I had delved into. To my relief, he didn't. He understood. At that moment, I took a vow. I would get off the hard drugs. I decided to stay on pot and alcohol so that it would lessen the blow of everything. I also decided to take a leave from University, and come home and go to Community College.

Chris and I got an apartment together. It was because of him that I cleaned up. We worked together at a local record shop. I was taking night classes in business management. I was starting fresh. I wiped out the two years of previous college because of my grades. In two years I graduated. Chris and I had been making a comfortable living, but we wanted more.

As the bullet starts to rip through the layers of my brain, I remembered one of the hardest things I had to do. Chris and I decided that we wanted to open our own shop. Being fresh out of college, and renting an apartment, we had no collateral to offer a bank. We had no way to get any start up capital. I bit the bullet and asked my father. From all the work he does, he has acquired quite a bit of money that he kept stashed in a savings account. He had never found out about any of my drug exploits because of his lack of presence in my life.

On a stroke of luck, I was able to get in touch with him while he was home for a day. I took him out to dinner and that's where I asked him for an investment in my business. I admit that I used a bit of a guilt trip on him, but it was well deserved. I told him how I hadn't asked for anything from him, and that he hadn't been there for me for all of my life. I laid out the plans that Chris and I had written up. After a three hour long talk, he agreed to loan us the start up capital, with the understanding that it would be paid back. Chris and I were on our way.

Our shop was a nice little hippie shop. We sold a wide variety of items. We had a large selection of drug paraphernalia, music albums, clothing, posters, stickers and other things along those lines. We set it up in the middle of our small town. Amazingly it took off. We were the only shop of its sorts in the area. Within a year we were able to pay my father back in full, with interest.

It was about the time that the bullet was screaming through my brain when my thoughts went to Aimee. She was my one and only love. I had had a lot of women during college, but never had I found love. I was at the shop one day, sitting cross-legged on the counter, talking to a regular customer when she came into the store. She told me how she was new in town and looking for a job. She was ecstatic to find a store of these sorts. Chris and I had only one other employee, who was part time. I called up Chris and asked if he thought it was a good idea to hire another employee. He agreed and Aimee was hired.

It didn't take long till the sparks flew. We instantly hit it off. We had the same interests. She would come over after work and get high with Chris and I. About this time, Chris was getting pretty hot and heavy with a rekindled love from high school. I was still without anyone. Aimee and I started to spend all our time together. One night, she spent the night, and that was it. We were married within the year, and we moved into our own place. We were pretty hot and heavy for the first few years. We made love almost every night.

The shop was doing amazingly well. Chris and I moved the store into bigger location and took on more employees. We were finally able to take proper vacations. Soon we opened a second store, in a near by town. Chris and I shared the work equally, so there was no disagreements about our fifty-fifty deal. He got married to his high school love.

The greatest memory and feeling of my life came as the bullet was just starting to leave my brain. Two years and three months after Aimee and I were married, Feather Anne was born. I was a proud father of a beautiful baby girl. I stopped smoking and drinking, cut the dreads I had been growing since college and grew up. I finally had the chance to be the father that my dad never was. It was my chance to break the cycle.

I was all that I hoped I would be, and more. I hadn't been away from Feather for more then a day. She was my life now. Chris had a little son too. Everything was going great. Our business had taken on three more shops. We were becoming quite a franchise. Aimee and me fell farther in love everyday, which is quite amazing. We knew each other to the tee.

Chris and I decided to sell the shops. We got quite a nice sum of money, and still held a large amount of stock in the company. We would be set for money for the rest of our lives. Chris and I still stayed really close. He decided to start another shop. This time it was a record store. I took some time off to spend with my family. Aimee went to work at a local diner. It wasn't that we needed money, it was just something to pass the time. I worked in a little workshop I had, making a wide variety of things.

The bullet started to break through the back of my skull when the main reason for my suicide crept into my mind. It was a beautiful spring morning when I kissed my Aimee and Feather for the last time. Aimee was bringing Feather to school. It was around ten o'clock when I got the call. Yet again, a car had taken away the only things that I loved. Aimee and Feather were t-boned by a tractor-trailer that was doing seventy. The hardest thing I've ever had to do in my life was when I walked into the hospital to identify the bodies. By that time I was a wreck and Chris had to drive me.

I will never forget it. I followed the doctor down to the lowest floor of the hospital, where the morgue was. I got a chill when my hand touched the cold metal door. Inside wasn't warmer. The first body he rolled out was Feather's. I could barely recognize my eight-year-old daughter's body. She had been thrown like a rag doll. By this time, I was almost in hysterics. The doctor asked me if this was my daughter. I choked out a yes. He covered my lifeless daughter and moved me over to my wife. I fell to my knees crying when he pulled back the ghost white sheet. My mind flashed back to my mother then my dog.

Chris tried his best to comfort me. After the funeral I became a reclusive. I lived all alone, barely socializing with anyone. Chris and his wife would come over, but nothing cheered me up. I slowly slipped back to drinking. Yet again my life as a downward spiral.

Life had become meaningless for me. All that was left was the bullet exploding out the back of my head.