Empty Hands – Empty Hearts

Today, I am all empty!

I have failed and I cannot find a purpose to my life anymore and even though I waited a year for things to resolve inside me, it is nowhere near. People say healing takes time, some heal earlier than others, but this isn’t healing and I cannot live with an open wound which is still bleeding, ceaselessly. Fathers age, they die, they leave you and it is considered normal. But my system is rejecting this normal. My Papa is not normal, has never been and would never be. He raised me more than my mother did, he care for me more than a parent is supposed to care, he has been my best friend more than Jai & Veeru has portrayed on-screen for us, he knows my secrets more than my diary knows and he knows how much I need him, more than I know it myself. Then what happened? Why did he decide to leave? Leave me in this inhuman, cold, heartless world, ALONE.

Honestly, I have memory issues and I fail to remember things (including crucial things). I don’t remember my medicines, I don’t remember dates (including some meeting dates, important birthdays and my own anniversary for that matter), I don’t remember people, most of the things I am supposed to do, my orders from the customers and receipt of money from them and that’s okay! I am surviving all that. What I remember is the warmth of people. My heart remembers the warmth it feels when I hear certain voices and that’s what keeps me going. What I am not okay with is the constant feeling that I will one day forget you. Your touch, your voice, your warmth, your love and you. And I am not okay with that. I am counting days in order to meet you and if I forget you, how will I search you? This gives me chills and tears like I have never had before, coz maybe I never lost you before.

I am trying, really. Trust me. Trying to smile for the pictures, laugh for the people around me but all I can see is you and that dimpled smile of yours which makes me cry. I am looking around and trying to find you in every cell on this planet, coz I know it in my heart that you cannot leave me just like that. I remember that day, every part of it, the day and the night and the wait on that date. Every second of that day and the permutation and combination of the possibilities of what could have been. I don’t remember the other things but I can’t forget that sight of you. I can see you right in front of me right now, dancing and giggling like you always did. Who would say that you have been in depression for years, maybe that’s why you were extra sensitive towards others, that’s why you never wanted to hurt anyone’s feelings, even unintentionally, coz you knew how it was to be when you’re at the receiving end. I have seen you upset, sad, even cry, but I cannot see you like this. Being in front of me and I cannot hug you, you hear every word I say but you don’t reply to me anymore. I wait. I still am waiting and I do not know when is this patience going to erode completely, coz its running thin for sure, absolutely certain!

I cannot dance anymore, coz I miss my motu dancing around with me. I can’t eat properly, coz there’s no one watching NEWS on TV anymore, I miss those important calls you used to make, just to tell me how politics around me was doing. I don’t want to go out, coz I don’t find you around me eating all the kachra from the roadside thelas. I don’t smile without a tear in the end coz no one laughs at my silliest jokes like you and I don’t want to live in a world where you aren’t beside me like you have always been. I am struggling to breathe everyday. My eyes yeans to have a glimpse of you, ears, to hear your cheerful good mornings, heart, to feel that warm hug and me, to live with you again.

Sometimes I wonder how difficult it is for my mom. I try to console myself thinking that if she is trying to be strong, so should I, afterall, it’s way more difficult for her than it is for me to cope up. But sometimes I just cry. Cry and realize that she had lived without you for 21 years of her life and she was okay but I have never lived a second of my life without you and maybe that’s why I’m not okay.

I look around in this sensible world with all the sense I have inside me, but nothing is making sense here without you. Why am I left, how can I just pass another day, what should I do to not remember you, how can I find you, where, in how much time. Coz its already been a year and I am not at peace. I don’t think I will ever be without you. So you decide, either you are coming back here or I’m coming to you, but this relationship cannot go on like this and this relationship is my life, so I cannot break it as well. I know it’s all being over emotional and dramatic, but you know how much I love drama and how I cannot live in moderation (I have always lived on extremes of everything, as you always said). So here I am, with hands on the keys of my laptop, trying to figure out what exactly is left for me to live for and I am still empty…

I won’t lie, looking in the void, it has occurred to me many a times that maybe I killed you. Not physically stabbed you. But the way you are the source of my life and the reason I’m living, I might have meant the same to you, and I have been away from you since the last 3 years. You must be as desperate and heart-broken then, the way I am, now. And no matter how much I blame shitty people around me for that, I know that you expected things from me and at the end, its me who have disappointed you and had left you breathing with a broken heart from my coldness. So, yes, I’m pretty sure, even though no one would find a fingerprint of mine or a stabbing weapon which could be blamed, I am pretty much the reason life was difficult for you and I’m sorry. I have other reasons proving that I cold heartedly murdered you, but lets just say, that’s for my own archives of guilt and as much as I deserved the other things in life, this is what I have to live with for the rest breathing moments of my life.

I wish I could undo so many things I have done in my life, but this one is hard to live with. This one is unbearable and as much as I would like to believe otherwise, the truth is that I used you. I used you for an amazing upbringing and the love and care that you showered upon me. I am a LEO and I’m as much of an attention-seeker as a Leo can be. I got it from you all this time and I took it for granted. Now noone’s attention matters and the one’s whose mattered is something I cannot ever get again and that’s why this restlessness, this desperation, this panic. Guilt makes us realize so many things.

Papa, I love you and I won’t say this to anyone else ever again coz I know only now, what love really means and trust me if this is love, I don’t love anyone else but you. Take my everything away, just come back this one time. I’ll take care of you. I’ll make pakode for you, chae to go along, baigan ka bharta in lunch and thumbs-up after that, vada pav and veg cutlet from Tea Junction at the end. I saw you trying to smile after 3 years without me and look at me, I couldn’t barely survive a year. As if someone sucked the life out of your Safed Bhoot, Papa.

The last friend I had in my life said “Don’t ever call me again, you Bastard” and the first thing that came to my mind was – “I am not illegitimate, I am my papa’s love. He prayed for me to come to his life and taught me how to live. Curse me more, tell me that I deserved worse, but don’t say anything to my papa”. But I don’t answer back now papa, I don’t stop people from saying shit. It’s all okay now, papa. I am living away from you and for all the sins I have done in all the lives I have lived, there could be no worse punishment than this and here am I living in hell.

Come back papa, I cannot bear this curse anymore. I thought life after rapes are the worst to survive, living with the pain and reliving the unpleasant moments again and again, everyday, each day of your life. But this is worse! You could still come back to your family and hug them and cry. They could still hold you tight when you shiver and wet the bed after a bad night. But here, it feels like boss level of a pain game. This pain tears me apart and I beg to die. I am no one’s favorite anymore. No one takes my side when I know I am wrong. There was a faith, a believe that even if I kill someone tomorrow, there’s one person who will still love me unconditionally, a person who will come to the jail with a tiffin box in hand to see if I have eaten properly. I have lost that faith now, Papa. No one is going to hold my hand and walk along anymore. I am no more important for anyone and my existence does not affect a soul anymore. All I want to know is, what have I done to have deserved this? I really want to know so that I don’t mess the same thing again in my next life coz this is a pain my body and soul cannot endure anymore. I see you everywhere, I smile, but I am not happy, Papa.

I am empty today and I lost!