My passion once burned like a fire inside me. It spread from my head to my toes like a wildfire spreads through the dying hills in Southern California. This fire ignited my life. The lighter fluid coursed through my veins, pumping throughout my body with my heart at the center of it all. This fire lit up my eyes and my brain was focused on it as I inhaled the deceivingly tasty smoke. I loved this fire. This was a good fire, right?
The thing about fire is it can burn for days. It can sustain the water being dumped on it and the dirt being thrown at it. It does not give into adversity because when it does, it is called weak. But what happens when the planes of water constantly bring the fire down and it is held back, unable to travel and keep burning, by the concrete road separating forests. Overcoming this road is the only way of keeping the fire alive, but it simply can’t. It can’t cross that road because it is not good enough or strong enough. It does not matter to the firefighters that this fire is desperately trying to hold onto its flames. “It will die out in no time” rejoices the people who dedicate their lives to destroying flames.
Soon, the lighter fluid runs out because the heart stops pumping it. Your eyes dim with the fire and your brain loses focus on keeping this fire alive and shifts to keeping you alive. Your lungs blacken from the smoke and you too burn out. The firefighters have succeeded in killing this fire that once maintained your whole body but now is the root of your decay. You are weak. You let this fire be the source of your survival, and is your fault for making your lighter-fluid heart the center of it all. How could you give the firefighters the power to extinguish your flame? Maybe I shouldn’t have given my life to this fire but at least the fire ignited me once. It was a good fire once, right?