Feature

My faded dreams

Marzia Rahman

When I was young, I used to think that I can be anyone I like and I can achieve anything I want. The things I needed for that were determination and strong will-power. I had both. So nothing in life seemed impossible or unattainable.

I was 18 then. Sukanta, the Bengal poet composed a poem on this age. He called this age incredible and dangerous. In this age, people neither fear nor despair. Nothing can lower their spirit. So were I and my dreams.

I passed that age years ago. I also passed college and university, twice I worked and twice I left my job. I got married and experienced the beautiful experience called childbirth. These experiences of life matured me, fulfilled me and completed me. But I also lost something, something that was very important to me. I lost my dreams and passions.

At 18, life seemed wonderful. At 30 my life seems static. It now resembles Pozo and Lucky's life in Beckett's “Waiting for Godot”. Now my life seems to me like an existential prison-house from where there is no escape and from where “Nothing is to be done”. Like Pozo and Lucky, I realize the utter futility of my endeavor and that it is pointless to 'struggle or wriggle' because 'the essential does not change'.

At 18, I wanted to be a politician, an army officer, a painter, a poet, a writer. There was not a single profession that I did not dream of becoming. At that time, I was a dreamer, a believer.

At 30, I am a home-maker and a mother. My passion faded somewhere between house-keeping and raising my kid. The hopes faded because I grew tired and weary, and somehow let life get in my way of succeeding at the very things I had always dreamt of achieving.

It sounds tragic, but it happened to me, and it can happen to any woman very easily. Or maybe it happened to a lot of women who had to let go all their goals and aspiration to remain a wife and a mother.

I realize my dreams were drifting but I was too busy with my daughter to stop it from eluding me. Or maybe I did not try hard enough. So the years crept by, and my passion disappeared, and so did my self esteem and goals I had set many years before.

So life was going like this without my dreams and desires. Then one day I realize. It is not just fair. Why did I let go all my hopes? I thought if I cannot leave my little daughter at home and work outside. Is not there any other way that I can still attain my dreams from home? Then writing came to my mind as a wonderful revelation.

Yes, that's it. I can write. I can definitely write. One of the dreams of my life was to be a writer. My passion for writing may be hidden deep in the layers of life and just needs to be rekindled.

So many writers like Monica Ali, Chitra Banerjee, and Ruchira Mukerjee were both mothers and writers. They wrote from home and attained fame even after attending their small kids. Maybe I would not be able to create some world famous literature but at least I can give a try.

I will write and mail out my write ups to different paper, magazines and journals. Some of them will be rejected and many of them will never be printed. But even if a small portion is printed, I will be overjoyed and will remember Frost's words without feeling remorse: “And miles to go before I sleep/And miles to go before I sleep.”

Now that my writing passion is aroused once again. It is time to put words to paper. So I thought of writing and the first thing that I decide to write is about my faded dreams and passions, how I lost them and how I rediscover them. I wrote it and mailed it to “Star Campus Magazine”. Now let's wait and see!