Every new person entering my life yields my fields of sob stories of who wronged me in the past. I always fear that they hear some sullen boy still not over it, but inside I want them to see that the strong person they know now began as a weak person. I want to say that the thieves that took from me, left me with an irreverent sense of determination (almost stubbornness) to prove them wrong or discount them — as if to say “what you did didn’t break me.”

Mentally I’ve kicked all of them in the teeth and kept going; I continued to walk on this road, steady on the search of Home. You must keep going and believing, or they will have taken everything from you.

What the thieves gave you was the courage to look inside and see what you have left. And what you have is everything to live for. The pursuit was what made the object valuable. There is still the pursuit and the story to share with someone.

On the note of my fields of sob stories, I’ll learn to abbreviate them. “Ain’t nobody got time for dat.”