[ WP ] In a world where sickness can be physically fought instead of hypothetically , you have just come across your toughest opponent ...

It got me. 
 
 I didn ’ t realize it until it was too late. My mother had warned me once about it. I was young, I didn ’ t understand. I told her that she didn ’ t need to worry. That I was okay. She smiled at me weakly. I was a child; I didn ’ t know any better. 
 
 The first time I met with this cruel, foul beast was when I was in high school. I didn ’ t recognize it at first. I didn ’ t really know what it was to be honest. I ’ ve seen a number of maladies that often caused trouble in the news. Like cancer, the flu, and the most common: colds. But this beast was different. 
 
 It was a feeble, whimpering thing, trapped in a gutter in a dark alleyway. It looked at me with its grey doe eyes and I was entranced. It looked so sad and lonely. I felt like I was looking at myself through him, his pain reflected what I felt and at that moment, I couldn ’ t stop myself from picking it up. I guess that was my mistake. I didn ’ t know what it was capable of. It lunged at me like a predator finally catching its prey and I closed my eyes. 
 
 When I opened them again, it was gone. 
 
 During those days, we were already taught how to fight. Maladies were a common thing nowadays and we have to learn how to protect ourselves from them. We learned the proper protocol on how to protect ourselves, first aid, and even learned hand to hand combat just in case once we couldn ’ t escape. 
 
 Our education system is jacked though. I started realizing that as I grew older. They didn ’ t teach us enough and they only taught us how to protect ourselves from common maladies. They didn ’ t tell us that there were new treatments we could ’ ve used. They only taught us basic protocol. 
 
 Stay clean and be resilient. Only use our weapons if needed. Only kids from high end school learned about other procedures. They have the resource. We have to rely on luck. 
 
 We didn ’ t know that there were different kinds of maladies. Books don ’ t even talk about anything new but just the same repriced things we ’ ve learned years ago. 
 
 I learned about new maladies when I got out in the field. I was lucky I didn ’ t encounter something as big as cancer but I did meet people who lived to tell the tale. Some even told me of some common maladies I didn ’ t know about. 
 I met a man named, Bravo and he told me of a great malady sweeping the world. He said his late wife had it for years and she didn ’ t have anything to use for her to fight. She went on living with the beast with her all those times with no treatment but they tried. Bravo swore, with tears in his eyes that he tried to fight the beast with her. 
 
 A few months ago, she passed away. She didn ’ t have any encounters with any maladies that endangered her life yet she took her own life without a second thought. 
 
 I tried to ask him if they asked the special forces to help them. it seemed farfetched for me that a single malady can do that to a person. To manipulate. To have no cure at all. Bravo wiped his eyes brimming with tears cursing all the special forces that didn ’ t help his wife. He told me every journey they ’ ve been to every special force they can approach. 
 
 He said that they could clearly see what she was going through, yet they told her that whatever she had will pass and didn ’ t take her seriously. He painstakingly described how he watched his wife, an amazingly sunny woman willing to conquer the world with him, turned into a dissipate woman who had extreme nightmares, that needed to be forced out of bed, and wouldn ’ t stop crying. 
 
 I asked him if he knew what it was. He didn ’ t. No one did. He just told me that it was a horrible malady. A parasite, digging into people souls, contaminating their minds till they became insane, and finally feeding them death like it was their only savior. 
 
 *It ’ s a subtle little thing*, he said, *you wouldn ’ t even notice it at first*. That was the horrendous part. No one knew where it came from or how to kill it. Yet the beast grew and multiplies. It affected hundreds of people, oblivious what it ’ s true form was. 
 
 It would latch on to its next victim, bury itself and make your body his own. Once it grows, it feeds off all your emotions; you start feeling tired, negative thoughts would start consuming your mind and alcohol numbed the void. It was an inevitable doom. 
 
 His retelling brought me back to my childhood. About my mother who told me about the same thing. She told me that I had to be careful. My father, who just died had suffered in the beasts ’ wrath and she threw hints that she was being consumed by it too. I was ignorant. I didn ’ t know that she was already crying for help. 
 
 Our family alone had multiple encounters with it, she said. It had something to do with our kind. She said we were easy prey. The creature knew who to attack and understood what weakness was. We were unprepared and our kin started to dwindle. 
 
 I remembered my mother telling me she would one day end it. Possibly, find a way for people to listen and treat it like what it was: a deadly malady. People should have been made aware, she told me once. She had fought it and eventually lost. 
 
 I was in high school when I lost her. 
 
 I never saw Bravo again after that. I went on and explored the field. Fighting these maladies was what kept me going. I was an empty shell that seemed to have lost its purpose after knowing that there were maladies we couldn ’ t control. I spiraled into a pit of hopelessness. 
 
 Finally, I realized that it got me. And it is too late. 
 
 I am writing this now, just in case. Just in case something would happen to me and I lose myself. I am starting to realize that symptoms Bravo and my mother had once described to me are similar. I ’ ve always had them and I have never realized that the beast had been inside of me the whole time. 
 
 Feeding. Growing. I can feel *it* emanate inside of me. 
 
 I wanted to write my accounts to everyone now, so that people would find it and try to find a way to stop it. So that people won ’ t just brush it off and tell us that it ’ s not real. That it ’ s all in our heads or that it ’ s just a phase. 
 
 An emotion we can just let go. 
 
 I am here to tell you that it is more than that. 
 
 And please, it needs to be stopped.
