God was crying again. More heavily than the previous day. The tears from heaven filled up the small and big potholes on the roads to form puddles and even small streams of water flowing down the streets.
While the clouds were bursting with rain, I was bursting with anger. I was in a mood where you are angry for no reason so everything becomes a reason for your anger. I was going back home from work. Though it was a 10 minutes walk from my office to home, I did not wish to get soaked up in the rain so I decided to wait for the bus at the bus stop.
For some reason, I was the only person on the bus stop. So I sat down on the deserted bench, trying to calm myself down. With nothing to do, I stared down at the big pool of water forming in front of me, looking for my reflection. They say water not only reflects you but what you are deep down. If that was true I’m about to encounter a demon, I thought to myself.
I bent down a little more till I finally saw a reflection. It was me yet not me. It was my younger self. A cheerful, dynamic and careless chubby little girl with the high-pitched nails-on-a-chalkboard voice. The starry-eyed girl always looked for bubble like joys- small and instant. She was squealing with joy as the first drops of rain gently settled on her hands.  She started jumping into small puddles and then as the rain increased, she made a paper boat and carefully pushed it into a puddle, assured that the sail of hope and anchor of love will not let that fragile boat sink.

Now God and I, both were crying. Tears rolled down my cheeks like the raindrops from the roof of the houses and edges of umbrellas. I had thought that the young girl was dead, her paper boat of soaring dreams crushed by the practical world, and the girl made into something else to compete in the rat-race, that something else being me.  It was only now that I realized that the young girl was still alive somewhere inside me, hiding somewhere, waiting to come out.
She would now, I thought and smiled at the reflection. She smiled back and disappeared into the waves of the puddle.
Sometimes we get so engrossed with running after materialistic things that we forget that the main purpose of life: to live. We forget to enjoy the little joys in this beautiful journey called life.  In this world of competition, we might win in the rat race but we lose what matters the most: ourselves.
I walked away from the bus stop, deciding to go home walking. By the time I reached home, I was cold and wet, dripping with rainwater and sneezing but I was happy.

My daughter opened the door with a worried expression.
“Mom, you forgot your meds. I hope you were not hallucinating again? And what’s with all this? You should’ve …”
I cut her off with a hug and whispered into her ear,

“I’m alive.”