Trich..

A normal 15-year-old, not a care in the world? Far from it.

My life is not a tale worth telling, at least not to some.

I am different from others. I am me, the way I have always wanted to be.

You'd think that would be all, the end?

A person that is different, big deal, you say.

But there is something more, more than meets the eye.

Something buried deep in the back of my mind.

I am different because of my disease, my curse.

No, it's not fatal, and no, it does not make me any more different than I appear to be,

It simply sets me apart from others, an invisible barrier.

Do I love it, or do I hate it? My best friend, or my worst enemy?

Trichotillomania. Such a long word for something so simple. I pull out my own hair. Literally.

The accursed dark monster that lingers constantly in me,

Constantly pushing its way into my thoughts.

I know everything happens for a reason, but why me?

Why must it be me that has to suffer?

I did nothing. I am innocent of all crimes.

Yet people look at me, with this disease, as though I were a dangerous criminal.

"See her bald spot? Why be friends with anyone who pulls out their own hair??"

There are many of us out there, though you may not know it.

Thousands, millions suffer from the same thing I do all across the U.S. alone,

and only they can understand how it feels. How it feels to live in the shadows.

Trichsters, I call them, for the simple fact that we are all alike, all connected.

We all must suffer, we all must pay. But for what?

What crimes have we all committed to suffer this pain?

You find out, after brooding on the fact as I have, that God hates to see us suffer.

He hates to see his children in the same sort of pain.

He never meant for it to be this way.

It is simply one of the devil's many Trichs, to bring down God's most loyal.

But in the end, God turns this horrible disease into something better,

For in the end, it only makes us that much stronger.

That's the Trich.