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My darling,

Come closer. I have so much to tell you. I wish we could sit together for hours, without worrying about time, and talk about everything under the sun. Although, knowing us, I doubt even eternity would be enough.

I don’t remember when I first met you, sweetheart. I don’t remember the first time I felt your presence or the moment I realised how much you meant to me. You have always felt familiar. I like to think that I’ve known you for much longer than this lifetime. You have existed for eternity, my love, and here I am, a human being who gets to spend only a few decades with you. What a strange and beautiful arrangement!

You know what makes me happiest? Finding you in places where people don’t always think to look. I see you in the warm sunlight, in the rain that gives life to thirsty soil, in trees that offer shelter and fruits to even strangers, and in animals caring for their little ones. I see you in everything that nurtures, protects, and sustains life. You are the language of the universe.

And I find comfort in knowing that you will continue to exist after I am gone. Even after humanity disappears, you will remain. The earth will keep moving, stars will continue shining, and life will find its way through the universe in forms we cannot even imagine. My darling, I genuinely love that I am only a tiny part of your eternity.

I also want to tell you why I started writing.

You know about my own bad experiences. Writing became a way for me to put my thoughts into words and understand things I was experiencing. But I had another reason for wanting to write.

I wanted to create awareness about mental health among Indian families. I wanted more people to understand that therapy and professional help are perfectly valid ways of taking care of oneself. Nobody should have to hide their need for support because their family might misunderstand them or society might judge them.

I wanted to reach people who had never considered therapy, families who dismissed mental health concerns, and individuals who needed someone to tell them that seeking help was okay. I knew these conversations mattered, and I wanted to be part of them.

Writing gave me a voice, sweetheart, and I wanted to use it for something that could genuinely matter to another person.

As I continued writing, my subjects grew. I started questioning misogyny, patriarchy, prejudice, and the many forms of hatred people have normalised. I found myself wondering how humanity could claim to love so deeply while treating other human beings with so little compassion.

People have used your name to justify some truly horrible things, my love. Jealousy becomes proof of affection. Possessiveness gets mistaken for devotion. People control others in the name of protection. Patriarchy finds ways to dress itself up as love, while asking women to compromise their freedom and dignity. I am sure you find it upsetting too.

I wish people would be more careful when they use your name. Calling something love doesn’t automatically make it loving. You shouldn’t become an excuse for controlling another person, discriminating against someone, or making anyone feel inferior. I wish they understood that you have nothing to do with the desire to own another human being.

There’s something else I’ve been thinking about, sweetheart. People spend so much of their lives wanting to be loved in a particular way that they sometimes fail to notice you in all the other ways you exist. They become so occupied with receiving the affection they expect that they overlook the kindness, companionship, and care already present around them.

I think we sometimes confuse wanting love with wanting the satisfaction of having our expectations fulfilled. We want someone to make us feel a certain way, respond in a certain manner, and meet every emotional need. Of course, we deserve affection, healthy relationships, and reciprocity. Recognising love elsewhere should never mean accepting neglect from someone who is supposed to care for us.

I simply wish people wouldn’t make one person’s inability to love them the reason they stop believing in you.

You are so much bigger than our expectations, darling. I wish humanity could experience more of you without constantly trying to fit you into its own definitions.

And that brings me to something rather personal. I want people to know me as your “Agent of Love”. I have always felt that the name expresses something I very strongly believe in. I believe in a love that knows no boundary we have created. A love that exists irrespective of someone’s gender, religion, nationality, identity, appearance, or background. A love that extends beyond human beings and reminds us that we are part of a much larger existence.

I don’t claim to understand you completely, my love. I don’t think I ever will. I simply want to keep exploring you through my writing and the way I experience the world. The name reminds me of what I care about and the kind of love I wish to keep making room for. It is something I want to carry with me, even on days when I don’t get everything right.

My sweetheart, I wish I had more than one lifetime with you. There are so many things I still want to discover, so many places where I want to find you, and so many conversations I want to have. I want to see how you continue to exist in a world that is constantly changing. I want to keep writing about you, even when I run out of words.

And when my little time here finally comes to an end, I hope I leave with a heart that has experienced you fully. I hope I have loved people well, made someone feel less alone, stood up against cruelty, and given a little more kindness to the world than I found in it.

Oh, my darling, if only you knew how much I adore you. I wish I could hold you close, tell you everything I have kept inside, and thank you for making this brief human existence feel so extraordinary. I could spend every waking moment discovering you and still wake up the next morning wanting more. I don’t need to understand every mystery surrounding you to know that I want you in every part of my life.

I have to leave one day, my love. That’s the one thing I cannot change. But I am so glad that I got to be here, that I got to know you, and that I got to experience even a fraction of what you are. If I were given another lifetime, I would spend it finding you all over again.

Until then, keep giving me reasons to fall in love with the world. I’ll keep looking for you, sweetheart. I have a feeling I’ll never run out of places to find you.

Yours, with every little moment this lifetime gives me, with a heart that will always wish it had more time with you.

Yours
Agent of Love
(Swarn Verma)