N Hossain

9/30/2015

Dr. Jason Ellis

When we are born, we come to this world with an empty hard drive(Brain).Yes, we do posses some preloaded program (Basic Instincts). Well they are just part of the defense mechanism, i.e.: We cry when we are hungry,  or we laugh when we are tickled; but that’s about it. We do not get any pre-loaded memory. When we touch fire and get burned we learn that it’s harmful. This particular event gets recorded as a memory and we learn not to touch fire ever again! So what I’m trying to say is the environment(both natural and man-made) around us changes us as a person. It doesn’t matter what kind of person I am today, because tomorrow I might become a completely different person. I know that, because I did change many times. Sometimes I changed because I wanted to improve myself as a person. Other time I changed just to get along better in the society. To this sudden changes, I call them “The Phases” . My name is N. Hossain, and throughout all of my life I have been through many phases  . Out of all the phases that I’ve been through one of them is very significant to me. I call it “My EMO phase” !

This part of my life is pretty memorable to me, because at that time of life, I was very emotionally vulnerable.  My “EMO phase” started just before when I was about to start going to middle school. It was a very tough time in my life. My parents left me and I was very heart broken . During that time I was living with my grandmother .She was a very nice person. She was the only  person who always loved me and always believed in me. But suddenly she got sick and eventually she died. As I was saying it was a very tough time in my life, It kept on going from  bad to worse. I had to move in with one of my aunts; who used to live in a different city. Which meant I had to leave my home town and my friends. My aunt wasn’t the nicest person in the world. She had three children of her own and she couldn’t make any extra effort for me. She was the type of person who believed that if I fall then I  should learn to get up all by myself. While,  I do understand her philosophy, I wished she had considered my age and the fact that I was going through the worst time of my life! Moving to this new environment wasn’t going very for well for me.

The new school wasn’t the most fun full thing for me. I didn’t know any of these new  faces. Unlike my old school , kids weren’t friendly in my new school. People there were more competitive than friendly. In the first semester of my new school  I didn’t have any luck  about making a single friend ( I did manage to make a few friends next semester). I was very shy to talk to someone and I didn’t want any attention  ,So I just used to sit on the very back of the class room . I didn’t like my math class, In fact I didn’t like any of the classes. Everything just  sucked!  In my new school I couldn’t make many friends  but   I did manage to make quite  a lot of enemies, I used to get bullied at least twice a day. That’s why I didn’t want to go the school .But my aunt wouldn’t listen to me.  She would pull my ear and say, “You listen to me! If you don’t go to school I’ll kick you out from my home. You’ll be on the street. Do you know what happens to kids like you on street?” ( I don’t  want  to write much about her speech,  but I can assure the fact that there were more  to her speech). I used to get scared from her speech and I couldn’t look at her into the eyes. If someday I was too scared to go to the school because some kid had threatened me , what I  used to do was I  would pretend that I was  sick, so I could skip school for that day. And then I would make my room dark  by closing all the curtain and lie down in the bed whole day. Sometimes I would play music in my dark room . I used to love rock/ alternative music. My  favorite bands were Green Day, Nirvana, MCR, Three Days Grace, Jimmy Eat World . Loneliness ,darkness, music, paintings were the only things which were helping me to cope in this new environment. But they didn’t always help . I was missing my Mom, I also wished my Grandmother was here with me.   Nothing felt good, everything felt like crap. When  I felt completely miserable I used draw stuff, I was a pretty  good artist ( Well, I like to think I was ). I used to draw different anime characters . That usually used to calm me down.

                                                                         (Some of my old sketches. Drew them with pencil and sharpie)

                        I always used to feel like I don’t belong here, in fact I don’t belong anywhere! One day when I was in my bed I start chanting, ” I wish I wasn’t here. I wish I wasn’t here. I wish I wasn’t here. I wish I wasn’t here. I wish I wasn’t here………………………………”. But even after I said that sentence over thousands of time, Nothing happened! I don’t know why I  expected for anything to happen! I felt like I was forsaken . Every time I thought about it I used to  break down in to tears . Now as I think more about it I used to secretly cry for very little to no reasons . I’m not completely certain why I was being so much emotional for no reason. I guess It’s because I was just a 12 year old emo- cry baby.

I didn’t know what’s the meaning of  the word being an “EMO” meant  when I was 12. According to the Oxford Dictionaries “EMO” means   , “A style of rock music resembling punk but having more complex arrangements and lyrics that deal with more emotional subjects.”.  My definition of the term “EMO ” is much different , ” EMO’s are a type of young people who aren’t courageous enough to solve their  problems which  they faces so they ends up doing many stupid things instead . Things like being pretentious  (wearing dark  clothing ,keeping long hair, listening to alternative/rock/ metal music) , Secretly crying , doing self-harm like cutting the wrist etc. I too did my fair share of those stupid things , which I have already  described  earlier .  I regret some of them. Sometimes I wish that it would have been pretty cool if I wasn’t the weirdo of the middle school. And also If I wasn’t so busy of crying all day by my-self , I could have done much better with my education. Today I hate fact that I was such a weakling, I wish I could have been more strong. But few those weird traits I still adore.   In fact I still do some of these things, i.e. : I still like to listen to rock music, almost all of my play-lists are some sort of rock genre music.  I also like sketching  sometimes .But inside I know I’m a different person now. Someone who is certainly more stronger, better, more mature  and with very less emotions .

(My recent sketches. Drew them in my cell phone )

When you use too much of something you soon run out of it. One example of that is natural resources. We human kind are using them so much that we might run out of it soon. I like to think our human emotions are a  bit like that. Would you believe me if I say we humans are running out emotion ( Not literally)!   One example of that is: When you see a homeless guy begging in the street do you really feel sorry for him? Probably you can pass by him without making any eye contact.  Or another example: Do you remember when was the last time one of your friend has sent you a funny picture/ joke . You know it wasn’t funny. You didn’t even look at it right. You just sent him a text that says, “LOL” ( By the way “LOL” stands for lying out loud). Well, they are just  some over  exaggerated examples to make a  point.  So any ways , I don’t consider myself as an EMO person any more, Mainly because I think like everyone else in the society I have started to run out of emotions .  I feel like I used to be too much emotional for no good reason.  I know life is not perfect , and probably it would never be. But the tragedies of my child-hood had made me emotionally vulnerable for a while . But everything in the whole entire universe changes with time. Nothing is absolute , And I’m not any different from everyone and everything. I am   a changed person now. Time has changed me once more. I have cut my long hair, gained few extra pound.  I’m not completely certain about what kind of phase I’m going through now ,(Maybe “Mr. Robot phase” . But it doesn’t concern here )but someday in future I would probably figure it out, and  maybe I would write /create another composition  on that phase! LOL .