You are on your way back to Kailash, and suddenly, all the happiness around you is turning into a wait of another 365 days. Everyone is already looking forward to your return, counting the days until they can welcome you home again.
But Maa, when you come next year, please come only if you can bring some genuine peace and happiness into my life. Don't come just to make me go through another year of pain. Don't let my loyalty be rewarded with betrayal, my love with dishonesty, and my efforts with the realisation that I was never enough.
I see you doing so many beautiful things for others, Maa. I see people praying to you, and I see their prayers being answered in ways that bring smiles to their faces. But why do you always seem to miss me? Am I not your child, Maa? Don't I deserve a little of the happiness you so lovingly give to others?
Wasn't everything I did enough? Was my love not enough to make the person I loved feel that he didn't need to look elsewhere for conversations, attention or affection? Did I lack something that made him seek what I thought we already had in each other?
Was I never enough for anyone, Maa?
All I ever wanted was to be enough somewhere. Just once, I wanted to be someone's first choice without having to compete with anyone else. I wanted to be loved without having to question my worth, to trust someone without being afraid of what I might discover, and to feel secure in the love I gave so wholeheartedly.
For my family, I have often felt that I am not enough. And somehow, Maa, you made my life such that even the man I loved with all my heart made me feel the same way. The one place where I thought I might finally feel chosen, cherished and wanted has become another place where I find myself questioning my worth.
Why, Maa? Why do you keep giving me one challenge after another? What are you preparing me for that requires me to endure so much? How much stronger do you want me to become? Must every lesson come at the cost of my peace? Must every experience teach me to survive something I never wanted to go through in the first place?
Sometimes, I wonder whether I am being punished for the deeds of my previous births. But if I am, then please, Maa, don't punish me anymore. I am tired. I really am.
I never asked for a perfect life. I never asked for all the wealth in the world or for every dream to come true. My desire to be loved truly has always been greater than so many other things in my life. I only wanted a love that was honest, faithful and wholehearted. A love where there would be no other person standing between us, where I wouldn't have to wonder whether I was enough, and where loving someone wouldn't mean slowly losing myself.
Was that too much to ask for, Maa?
I have spent so much of my life trying, adjusting, understanding and holding on. All I wanted was to love someone and be loved in return, with the same sincerity, the same loyalty and the same willingness to choose each other, even when life wasn't easy.
But somehow, even that simple wish seems to have been denied to me.
So, Maa, as you leave for Kailash this year, I have just one request.
When you return next year, please bring something good into my life. Bring me the peace I have been longing for, the happiness I have been waiting for, and the love that doesn't make me question whether I deserve to be loved. If there is someone meant to walk beside me, let him come with honesty in his heart and the willingness to choose me without making me feel that I am competing for his affection.
And if none of that is waiting for me, then at least give me the strength to stop yearning for what keeps hurting me. Give me a heart that can finally rest, a mind that can finally be quiet, and a life that doesn't feel like one long struggle to be enough.
I don't want another year of lessons, Maa. I don't want another year of having to find meaning in my pain. I don't want to be told that everything happens for a reason when all I can feel is how much it hurts.
For once, I want something beautiful to happen to me without having to suffer for it first.
So next year, Maa, come only if you can bring some genuine goodness into my life. Come if you can bring me reasons to smile, people who mean what they say, and a love that feels like home.
Because this year, I have nothing left to ask for except a little happiness of my own.
And Maa, please don't mistake my words for a lack of faith in you. Perhaps they are coming from the very last corner of my heart that still believes you might hear me.
I am still your child, aren't I?
Then, for once, Maa, please choose me, too.
With a heart that is tired of waiting,
Your child.
