Whispers To The Oblivion ...

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 কট...

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...