Last night before going to sleep I prayed to God to never wake me up.

But He did. Twice. Or three times. Before I fully opened my eyes at 8 AM and realize He didn’t give me what I want.

After my regular afternoon prayer, I broke down and curled up on the mat. I couldn’t concentrate on my prayer. I couldn’t think, only feel the irresistible urge to cry, and cry again. I laid down on the soft mat and faced my room ceiling. I prayed again, God, please do not wake me up again this time.

But I knew deep down, as I closed my eyes and another batch of tears rolled down my cheek, that it was not happening. It didn’t matter that I cried as hard as possible, or wished as willfully as I could, my eyes would soon open yet again without permission, without regard to what I want or what I didn’t want. Unless there was something remarkably wrong in my brain’s wire design, I would wake up and then find I’ve already wasted most of my day feeling sorry for myself.

It’s the way my body worked and had always been working. It’s the way my brain worked and had always been working. Without some extraordinary power to alter this situation, the miraculous yearning to never wake up is never going to happen. Which, it had never done, and wasn’t going to happen to me anytime soon.

There was absolutely no reason for God to fulfill this wish of mine. I wasn’t special in any way. In fact, the reality that I’m lying on other people’s bedroom floor crying is one evidence proving it. Shouldn’t I be out there and changing the world, as they pointed out, in my prime? Shouldn’t I not be feeling like a useless piece of trash all the time, all these years? Guilt-ridden, I still laid unmoving while a part of my brain pestered me with unreasonable thought and epic tales of adventure I would never accomplish.

Maybe this was the wrong request to wish upon. Maybe He just didn’t care about me. Maybe He just didn’t exist to fulfill my wish. Or maybe, this is not how He works?

Perhaps, instead of asking Him to do it for me, what I should do is to just do it myself and ask for forgiveness, right?