Am I Alive?

Dear Architecture, Do I still love you?

Dear Architecture,

I love you! Since I saw you for the first time, I have hopelessly fallen for you more and more. That big bungalow where I spent my childhood was your harbinger for me. I would sit in my balcony and feel the cool breeze wash my hair, I would bask in the daylight that filtered through the window, listen to birds chirping in the garden and rain falling on rooftop; stretch my hand out the door to try and collect the raindrops in my hand. You are the one that enriched my existence since the beginning of time. You were my basic need second to only food and clothes. You protected me, but at the same time you let me engage with the rain, the sun, and the wind.

As I grew up, I saw your different forms. Your magnificence hit me when I went to school. I would run around in the large halls with high ceilings, sometimes hearing my own echoes, sometimes indulging in the peaceful silence. I realized how intricate you could be yet so sensitive to the people around you. My own existence seemed insignificant in front of you. It made me love you all the more. All my life I knew that you loved me back because you always made me happy.

But now, now I am scared. Sitting at my desk in this big office tower, staring out the huge glass which spans from floor to ceiling, I am scared. I am scared to see what you’ve become. I am scared to think what will happen in the future, our future. I am at the 13^th floor and I don’t feel a thing, if it’s raining outside, I am dry. If it’s sunny outside, I am cold. If it’s windy outside, I am still. I can’t hear the birds chirping, can’t feel the peaceful silence; sounds of whirring machines surround me. There’s a disconnect between your own outer and inner self. You look beautiful from the outside but it does not reflect on the inside. You are a limitless circle on the outside, but a confined square inside. It’s like I don’t know you anymore. You were the one who connected me with nature, but now you detach me from it. You protect me all the time, I feel trapped within your confines.

You’ve changed! You’ve lost your purity. It makes me want to run away from you. Take my heart and smash it at the glass that stares at me so blankly. I keep asking myself if I still love you! And the voice from deep within stops me and says “YES!” It says there’s still hope. It says that if you and I try we can make it work. If we go back to our happy memories and rekindle the essence that brought us together, relive it in our current times, we can solve it. But how? After all these years, how?

Do you have an answer?

Hoping for our better future,

Me