Empty

You ignored me today again. This is becoming a daily affair for me now. Maybe I will get used to it eventually. My mother tells me that we have to get used to the indifference and accept it as our reality. She tells me about her harrowing experience when she had to stay empty for months before she had her first piece of plastic. It was a bright sunny day she tells me when you came strolling along with that piece of chocolate wrapper in your hand that seemed no lesser than a knight in his shining armor. She had her hopes rejuvenated that auspicious day. However, her happiness was short-lived because the very next day you walked right past her and dropped that chips packet into the lap of our neighbor, the Drain. She accepted the hard truth and got used to your ignorance to make peace with her reality.

I always had the impression that our relationship would be a different one despite repetitive warnings from my mother about expectations. In my head, I was the symphony to your melody. I was always patient with you expecting that you would eventually realize my worth some fine day. I had created an opaque layer of illusion in my world that glorified your every action. In retrospection, my loyalty towards you was slightly motivated because I always hoped that you would “use me” someday. At times, you perplexed me to extreme ends with your irresolute actions.

At home, it’s completely a different feeling with you. You seem to become the best version of yourself by pampering me with plastic, paper, food waste and what not! You even throw me those occasional surprise by venturing out of your usual way to segregate the waste. I wish I could express how important I feel when you do that. I feel like I’m on the top of the world, literally on cloud nine.I don’t know what goes wrong when I’m in public that you fail to even acknowledge me. It completely baffles me the way you completely disregard me, like I don’t exist. At one point in time, I considered you might be suffering from dissociative identity disorder.

The other day, mother nature was pouring her heart out in the streets and our neighbor, the Drain couldn’t take it any longer. He silently prayed for forgiveness even though it wasn’t his fault. After all, what could he have possibly done to stop the water from overflowing when he was clogged with plastic and waste which served as a hindrance to the flow of water? And there you were struggling to drive your fancy looking car through the knee-deep water. My heart sent out a wrenching cry at the sight of you struggling with the very demon you had created. I could see your sorry face waddling through the murky waters. But then, time has taught me that you would soon forget these self-created ideocracies.

Sometimes, I feel sorry for you and at other times, I feel an uncontrollable anger towards you that slowly burns me from the inside. But you know what they say about love, “Love is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own”. I suffer from my version of unrequited love and pangs of heartache drives me into delirium. I dream of a day when I won’t stay empty in the streets and you would gleefully fill me with garbage.