I sit in the small dark room of my life, looking for you so that I may see you. I look for you every time I am in trouble. I look for you every time I am lonely and sad. Forgive me for forgetting to look for you when I am happy. But those are brief moments when I forget about myself, and then happiness comes by itself, like an uninvited light that suddenly enters through the window of the small dark room of my life. It illuminates every corner, and for a moment I forget how long I have walked. I forget the pain of my eternal journey.
In the small dark room of my life there are several corners against which I always bump whenever fate is not generous to me. The floor is old and scratched, and the paint has long since worn away. Every time darkness drives happiness out of my little room, I fall to the floor to pray, and with every sorrow another layer of paint disappears. You can see how much suffering this room has endured. Even my knees have taken on its colour.
The ceiling of my room is high and almost unreachable. Every time I want to achieve something, I have to jump higher and higher to reach it. The ceiling is as ruthless and distant as an unattainable dream. Exactly like your love. But I never stop jumping. I never stop trying to reach the height of my own dreams.
One corner of the small dark room of my life is hidden behind a thick curtain through which even the light from the window cannot pass. I go there whenever the burden of my body becomes so heavy that I must weep for it. There, behind the curtain, I gather its physical suffering and cry over our lives. There the heart of my body rises again for a new life. Because after every fall comes a rising. Behind that curtain I weep for the fate of human beings, born in grief and pain, pursued by suffering throughout their lives. The pain of the body's end. The pain of love's end. Behind the curtain I spend intimate moments merging with the universe, which absorbs every tear I shed as part of the conscious process of suffering. After every suffering comes change. No true change comes while we are happy. This is probably an unfair, yet consistent law of the universe governing human life. In that corner I weep because I cannot receive your love.
Another corner of the small room of my life is a little altar where I go to pray whenever I lose my connection with the great cosmic energy. There I spend intimate moments searching for the purpose and meaning of my small, fragile and mortal human body. After every sincere prayer to my cosmic God, I feel as though I have been born again. Born in faith and hope. Hope that one day I will receive your love fully and unconditionally.
The little dark room of my life has only one small window. Although it is small, it lets in enough light. Without that light my life would have no meaning and my body would have no life. Light is my connection with you, with the love that comes from you. Your love is what teaches me to love life, to embrace it and to believe in it.
This small room, surrounded by four walls, four corners, an old grey floor from which all the colours have faded, and a tall unreachable ceiling that connects me with the starry horizon—this small room is my life.
I am like a beggar who does not know how to deserve your love. Whatever I do is still not enough. Whatever I do feels completely inadequate. Tell me what I must do to receive your love. I am like a beggar content with very little, with only a few crumbs of love. Sometimes a few crumbs are the exact measure of love I need to keep my heart from freezing. And you are so generous that you give me those few crumbs in the form of a distant smile or a passing thought.
But I beg you, do not torture me with your love. If you truly love me, give me all your love at once and forever, like a large portion of fried potatoes that can satisfy my hunger. Instead, you resemble a miser, giving me very little and always at the wrong time. But I beg you, do not torture me with your love.
You say that I am everything to you, your whole world, that I am even the starry cosmos that lights your dreams at night. Yet you keep your love to yourself and measure it out in drops. And those drops are never enough because I am dying of thirst—a thirst that you alone cannot quench.
You say that I am your reason for existing. That without me your existence would lose its meaning. Then do not torture me with your love. Send it to me generously. Send me your love now, at this very hour, because today I need it. Give me your love because I am your reason for existing.
I am like a monk who has lived in solitude for so long that he has forgotten what it means to love with the body. Like a monk who has lived alone among crowds of people, people with greedy hearts, cruel hearts, from whom he has learned to love God but not human beings. Do not torture me. Show me your love. Teach my heart, which has forgotten, how to feel again through the body. Give me your love now, today, because tomorrow I may no longer exist.
I am like an unbeliever who needs proof to silence all doubt. Send me your love. Prove to me that you exist.
You tell me that I simply have to believe you and that this will be enough for love to reach me. But you are great and powerful, while I am small and lonely in the vast ocean of human hearts. You tell me to go out and hunt for love. Do you mean that I must sell my body so that someone will love me? Are you not too cruel by deliberately depriving me of your love, teaching me patience and faith? But I do not want lessons. I want your love every hour of every day. Is that really asking too much?
When I wake up in the morning, I want someone to greet me with a kiss at sunrise. I want someone to love me so that I have a reason to begin my day. Someone with whom to share it.
When I fall and life becomes difficult, when darkness descends upon me, then I still need love. I need someone whose tenderness and passion will make me believe that there is light within the darkness. Send me that love. I will keep my window open. Let the light and the hope of tomorrow enter through it.
You are like a lover who only knows how to take from me. You take my strength, my energy, my tenderness, until I remain empty, emptied of love. You are like a cruel lover who deliberately causes me suffering simply to prove your superiority. You want to see my tears as proof of my love. But you are a jealous lover who suffocates my soul, destroys my heart, ready to take my very life in order to possess me completely.
Do not torture me with tests of my faith or with suffering deliberately sent to discover how faithful I am to you. Because I am faithful to myself. It is not I who must prove my love to you, but you who must prove your greatness to me.
You say that without me you would not exist. That without me your existence would lose its meaning. You say that you are Love itself and that through you I must learn how to love. Because love is life and the continuation of life.
But why are you sometimes a love that destroys my soul? A love that obsesses me and makes me a slave to longing and suffering.
Why are you sometimes a love that has no courage to fight for itself and slowly dies, locked away inside its own heart? Can you not hear it crying for help? Can you not hear it begging you to save it, to give meaning to its pain and sorrow?
I do not want easy love. Love to which I can quickly become accustomed. Do not give me easy love, because I will soon forget it and begin searching for another, simply because I enjoy conquering and leaving. Give me difficult love. Impossible love. Passionate, devastating and obsessive love. A love that sweeps over me like a storm, after which I will never be the same because I will finally understand the divine meaning of human love. The divine meaning of human love is to make us greater, to show us the path beyond the end of the here and now. The path that leads us back to the Creator.
I spend my days and nights inside my little room. My heart beats like a bell whose music fills the room. It is all waiting, longing and faith. It is divine music through which you speak to me.
You remain calm, distant and unreachable. Yet in brief moments I manage to feel your presence. Only the spring wind passing through the window of my little room tells me that there is hope, that your love is already travelling towards me. Your love is already here. It is the reason for my existence. It is the hope that after the end I shall meet you again.
Can you hear me, God?
(Elena S. Lyubenova)
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