Whispers To The Oblivion ...

How time flies, doesn’t it? It’s 11 th December again. Life has reversed its gears from happiness to sadness and back and forth countless number of times. I sit at my desk looking at my life in retrospect; it’s almost midnight. Through closed eyes, I see a quick flashback of my life. What I remember distinctly is that chilly night of 11 th December 2013. I didn’t attend Choto dida and Choto dadu’s marriage anniversary celebration because I had to prepare notes for a boy in my class: the one who didn’t budge from not only breaking my heart but also abusing and gaslighting me. Even through closed eyes, I can see all of it, clear as a daylight. The first day we saw each other, the day he told me he had a girlfriend and I stopped talking to him, the day he showed up at my physics tuition and then the last time we ever met when he tricked me into believing that to love means to touch. Ironically, he never loved me, but asked me to prove my love by letting him in through the fragile naiv

A ray of light seeps through the crevices of my soul, early into the fall, filling my senses with the aroma of Shiuli , and my mind floats in the effervescent 'skies' of hope. And then, out of nowhere, I realize: With someone's touch, my wounds have sealed. With someone's love my bleeding heart healed.

Missing someone is so strange. It gives you a farrago of emotions, ranging from a terrible unrest to a lasting calmness in lieu of a fleeting hope that the isolation will be over soon. I wonder how intensely you must love a person that when you part, even temporarily, a sudden paranoia grasps you by the throat. How profoundly can a woman love a man that the fear of death, of effervescent hearts, natural calamities and even a fear as trivial as changing seasons can occlude your breathing, hinder your living? I had once read somewhere that the way a man loves is different than a woman. A man is quick to fall in love and he either falls deeply in love or not; like an all or none situation. But for a woman in love, it’s anything but binary. It’s an expedition she embarks upon, one day at a time. Somedays in love, she delves deeper and deeper into an abyss of bittersweet mantle of love and in others, she holds herself back, lest her fragile heart is grappled with again. She waits quietly in

আর কটা দিন অপেক্ষা করলে পারতিস, বেশি নয় মাস দেড়েক.... তুই তো জানতিস আমার সময় লাগে, অত তাড়াতাড়ি পারিনা ভালোবাসতে অত তড়িঘড়ি পারিনা কথা দিতে  আসলে তুইও খুব অভিমানী - আমার মতো  যেদিন প্রথম দেখা হওয়ার কথা ছিল - আমার আসতে দেরি হল বলে তুই রাগ করলি ব্যাগ নিয়ে বেরিয়ে পড়লি,  কলেজের গেটের বাইরে- তুই তো জানতিস আমার একটু সময় লাগে, সময়ে আমি কাঁচা সেদিনও অপেক্ষা করেছিলাম আমি ঝিলের পাড়ে দেড় ঘন্টা,,,, সময় বদলালো, শহর বদলালো তোর আর আমার অন্য মুলুক তুই চিঠি পাঠালি 'প্রেম করবি?' বিশ্বাস কর, বলতে চেয়েছিলাম 'হ্যাঁ' কিন্তু সাহস হয়নি তুই তো জানতিস আমার একটু  সময় লাগে... বাবা বলেছিলেন ভালোবাসা টা 'ম্যাগি' নয় স্তরে স্তরে মসলা মাখিয়ে হাল্কা আঁচে তৈরি, ভালোবাসা টা আসলে বিরিয়ানি আমিও তাই স্তরে স্তরে  তোকেই ভালোবেসে ফেলেছিলাম তবু জানতাম সঠিক সময়ে আসলে সেদিন তোকে বলব। হয়ত পঞ্চমীর দিন ম্যাডক্স স্কোয়ারে  তোর হাত টা ধরে বলতাম, হয়ত ডিসেম্বরে শহরে ফিরে,  তোর পাশেই মিছিলে হাঁটতাম তোর উষ্ণ জ্যাকেটে মুখ গুঁজে  ট্যাক্সি করে বাড়ি ফিরতাম হয়ত তুইও ভালোবাসতিস হয়ত আমিও ভালোবাসতাম। শুধু আর কটা দিন অপেক্ষা ক

I met a girl who lost her mother in Syria and her father abandoned her. She left home at 19 to go to college ( or maybe to escape her despondent life, who knows?). She had two sisters, twins, whose destinies were braided together, not in Syria, but in the United States. I met that girl on a bus and much later, in the flow of a conversation, I had asked her with ample hesitation,  -"So, who do you call your family?" -"Anyone who takes care of me" I cannot tell if it was because I wanted to be her family or just my compassion for an ailing friend, but, I took her to my home that night. after the doctor discharged her from the ER. There was nothing fancy at home to offer as food to a guest that night. I had not cooked much that entire month courtesy of my crippling anxiety and depression. Yet, that day I wanted to cook for her. I prepared a simple Bengali meal of bhaat, dal, papad, and fried eggs. I think at some point she told me I can take care of her like her dead

I don't want to be happy anymore. I am done chasing dopamine and serotonin. I just want to feel whole. I just want to eat, sleep, go to work, return home and do it all over again for days after days and never feel a thing. It is okay if I don't feel happy anymore. I just don't want to feel empty again, that sudden wave of anxiety, sadness, and foreboding that consumes me when I am alone. I don't want to turn off the lights at night and then stare up at the ceiling thinking why I am never enough for people, and why everyone can just easily choose someone over me...why they can never hurt them but can hurt me, and why I always, always, always lose everything like sand flowing through my fingers.

After a while, you want to stop thinking because it is  a dead-end of thoughts. You stop feeling the cut-throat emotions at 3 a.m. or the butterfly-in-your-belly joy at little compliments from strangers. Actually, you stop trusting people with your vulnerabilities. After a while, you stop asking the 'hows' and the 'whys' because no one really answers them. After a while, life is just an elaborate  exercise of acceptance; a never-ending numbness So much that, when you hit rock bottom, you realize that the rock is your heart. After a while, your eyes that once glistened with dreams appear blank, abandoned by tears.

I No one has ever taught me to put myself first. Growing up, I always saw my mother put the largest piece of fish on my sister’s plate, then the second-largest on mine, then the third-largest on my father’s and she would beam with satisfaction and joy as she served herself with the smallest piece of fish. They say that human beings of my kind, I mean, people who grew up with emotional abandonment and its resultant depression are often people-pleasers, and I can never make them understand that the reason I always put the largest piece of fish on my roommate’s plate is not because doing that makes them think highly of me, makes them love me, but because that’s what I have been taught at home, to find satisfaction in other’s joy. It bewilders me, pains me to think of the fact that I have grown to be so mentally unstable. Every phase of my life brings about new challenges. Let me rephrase that. Being an ambitious woman, I have never feared challenges. I am in fact very fond of them in a wa

  Life is, but snow. Crumbling down as you try to hold on firm in fistfuls. And I stare out of my window with blurry eyes shortening breaths, as if it were winter days of Iowa City. The sun shining upon the snow a blazing white light blinding when it hits the eyes I wish everything came to a standstill like the white frosting on trees I wish the struggle were over One day Today at mid-noon? in the evening? Life moves forth Time passes by Pain remains Stubborn. Resilient. I have to shovel the heaviness in my heart I have to dissolve the knots in the pits of my stomach. Please, God, give me the strength to be able to breathe in the next moment.

One December evening, preceding supper, the knife had taken too much of my flesh. I couldn't help losing dexterity on my culinary skills, on all of my life, one crimson drop at a time. The kind doctor had covered my wounds, promised it would heal. And as I lay at night aching every place I wondered who'd bandage my bleeding heart, Who'd promise it will heal?

Pain resurfaces after midnight and sometimes flow out of my eyes then leave me numb peeling me out of  the dark into the absinthe of evil insecurities. Unheralded, epiphanies settle in everyone will always  choose someone over me Someone more beautiful Someone more worthy Someone  better over me always.

Awake from slumber, still in a trance, my being liquidating into droplets, one after the other dripping like the rain from the heavens. Black demons, ugly demons, ugly memories from the past that I revisit  tirelessly again. History repeats itself and I break apart, What do I do with this lump in my throat this lovesickness this homesickness this congestion in my chest? Touch is such a lovely feeling but what if  it had an evil side an overlooked premonition? Love is such a homely feeling but what if  I told you today that it can too, set fire to all things you've called home- people, places, and time?