Thief

She's been with me since I was maybe fourteen. I didn't notice her until I was sixteen, didn't know her name until I was nineteen. She has robbed me profusely. Sometimes she steals my energy which is fine during a weekend nap and less so when I'm trying to get motivated for a shower or for work. She steals my social life and my carefully constructed social profile. She steals any conversation starter. She steals my emotional balance and leaves me to feel it so very clearly. She robs me of joy. She robs me of comfort. She robs me of breath. She steals and she takes, not everything, but always something.

She has downright stolen my will for life.

But I'm only twenty. I choose to believe she'll give it back some day. I'll just wait patiently for it to happen while I go through the rough. I'll go through the waves of ash, embers, flames. I won't make it out unscathed, unchanged, ‘cause a man who walks into fire will be charred. 

Yet the man who sits in the burning house will die. 

The man who walks out through fire will live.

CCHIO