Ashaa Othoba Nirashaa: আরেকটা টান কি দিবি বন্ধু?

_{Little Hope In All Her Glory}

That is how most cases of drug abuse begin, with আরেকটা টান. When A peer successfully establishes some concept of grandeur about drugs in front of a friend. Whos psyche is somewhat weak at that moment due to any number of reasons, that is all it takes. Like a falcon diving down towards its unsuspecting prey from miles high up in the sky. And in this case, one bad friend and a motivated vulnerable teen.

My tale of melancholy too begun like that. It did as it was supposed to because of me matching perfectly with the duitable conditions of a junkies primordial soup state only with a teensy bit of delay. Almost like a light bulb flickering bright just before its filaments give out. My story, too, had started with Hope but ended in despair.

Edgar Alan Poe’s Black cat had visited me in my dreams that night. A sweaty nightmare that kept repeating itself every time I read any of Poe’s horrors before going to bed. And at the very eve of my semester break, this pointless nightmare had woken me up to a cloudy dawn.

_{Guardian Spirit Totoro. Resembles Something Too Close To My Heart}

I commute 20 miles every day to get to my campus, along with many compatriots/batch mates. At 8 in the morning, we, a few familiar faces, wait for our chariot. A slow and old double-decker red bus, almost like the one Harry Potter got up on at the very beginning of Prisoners of Azkaban.

Being existed for more than 20 years, this bus route has turned into a little community of its own. Here, we have our own culture. We play, act, and sing like Irish Bards, except most of us have a voice comparable to that of only a donkey.

And every year, when the freshman’s start using the buses, we few overly enthusiastic seniors volunteer for the job of acquainting them with that culture mentioned previously. That year, 6 of us idiots were put on duty.

The initial briefing about what to do and what not to do was reasonably easy. But, the hardest part of this was getting the newcomers to sing, used as a method of breaking the ice. Once you let loose your inner musician, there is no going back. This was our initiation tactic for the Freshmans similar to that of Hells Angels initiating with tattoos or whatever it is they do with the recruits.

Among those plebs standing with anxious, curious, and slightly cautious faces, thinking we might bully them or something, I saw one that stunned me a little.

A beautiful plain and calm face with no use of cosmetics whatsoever yet so elegant. And eyes that looked sharper than Wakizashi. One look stabbed my heart and caused it to explode into a thousand flowers. Pheromones in the air made that one moment become heavenly.

For the next few months, everything seemed bright, colorful, and vivid. Like a particular curtain was unveiled from before my eyes. And I loved doing EVERYTHING. Little did I know that she had a boyfriend. What an irony.

I tried out my luck and was respectfully declined as if it was some business deal, and the other party didn’t like my bargaining skills. Everything turned bleak once again.

I think most people take the ugliest decisions ever in these types of situations. The event that caused the unrest in one’s psyche might not be as eventful as they think of it. But still, most of us with low self-esteem choose the path of destruction.

As time progressed by, she became more proactive in our little community, and I started losing myself more and more because of not being able to handle the rejection. And on top of that, they kept popping up in front of me, she and the love of her life, I guess! in places I did not expect, laughing, having the time of their lives.

Then, somebody had found me, a guy who has dabbled in the world of euphoria for a long, long time. My self-control gave up to his evangelic words of preaching drugs as an escape. With him, I was getting higher up than the moon by paying an exorbitant cost of destroying my neurons, precious time and resources in search of finding happiness and chasing the unicorn throughout the cosmos.

I lost so many things in those couple of years. And paid in an intangible price for something so idiotic yet so simple and naïve.

At the very beginning of 2019, when everything was still so chaotic and messy, destiny had sent her for me. That pale, plain face with sharp Wakizashi eyes. Initially, I thought all she felt was pity and sympathy, which should pass away like a good high. But by defaulting all the ungrateful thoughts my sorry ass had, she has tagged along. And single handedly dragged me out of the bottom of a pitch-black pit.

This portion of my life has taught me so many things like patience, self-control, and all that. But the most important thing it taught me was, Never to Lose Hope. A flimsy word, spoken and written millions of times throughout history, but still, it’s as relevant today as it was at the birth of civilization. Of course, life is random and changes at a moment’s notice, yet, Hope and a teeny tiny bit of patience is what it takes to change the world, to change humanity. Just like My guardian spirit Totoro changed mine.