The next few weeks were a real struggle. Mental turmoil was a new emotion for me, and not a fun one. I felt I had let myself down, and that I had wasted four months of my life to hard, cold misery, and all for nothing. I was depressed and I felt useless. And that was on a good day. The only silver lining was that my squadron training team had invited me back to try once more--if I wanted to. It would involve going all the way back to the start. Day one. It was a truly horrendous concept. But they didn't invite people back who they didn't feel potentially had the right attitude or abilities to pass. That was some small glimmer of hope, at least. At this point, my greatest enemy was myself. Self-doubt can be crushing, and sometimes it is hard to see outside the black bubble. I tried to look at the situation objectively--I'd failed Selection only a third of the way through the course--what chance did I really have of passing if I tried again? My family said that maybe it wasn't meant to be and that I had gained an invaluable experience from it. This just made me feel worse. Yet through it all, a little part of me, deep down, believed that I could do this--that I was capable of passing. It wasn't a big part of me, but it was an ember. Sometimes an ember is all we need.