Sweetheart, you are my drug!

Hello Sweetheart,

I was talking to our cousin, yesterday -- the one who just got engaged. I was telling her about how my Mom (back, before my kindergarten days) used to sing that old Bengali song
"Orey Mamoni
"Amar Cho-kher-o pani
"Anchol diye muchey diye jaash Mamoni"
(I never quite figered why her fixation with that song, given that she has no daughter)
and my annoyance at the words
"Tui je hobi por
"Jokhon Ashbe-re tor Bor"
because you were always on my mind (and let's face it, I was hopelessly in love with you; and -- in a fraternal way -- I still am) and I did not like the thought that after you got married you would not be part of our family, any more. For many years, after you got married, I rejoiced because I figured that I had been right, and my Mom had been wrong -- after all, I got a DulaBhai to talk to (personally, and professionally), and you did not stop being my Sister (cousin, but I don't know any better). Right then, however, I stopped, just as I got to the words
"Amar e-ghor shunno korey jabi onno ghor"
because it was then that I realized that you had left a void in my life -- you left a certain sense of emptiness.

You see, you did a lot more than just take me out and buy me candy (when I learned to walk) and play "guess who's the pretty girl covering your eyes from behind your back", and sit me in your lap and trim my nails -- you created a persona that traveled with me far and wide -- for even in my darkest days and loneliest nights your thoughts brightened my horizons, and in a sense brightened my skies. You see, when my Mom and I first left our home country, to live with my Dad, I suddenly lost everyone I knew, and I figured that people only came into my life to go away, and that no one was going to stay, and by the time I started kindergarten (at age 5) I was of the mindset "If people are going to come into my life just to go away, then why bother making friends at all?"

Even during those days, however, your thoughts would brighten my days, and I would cheer myself up as I fondly remembered the times that I had spent with you -- something that I ended up continuing to do, without even thinking about it, long after I had started school, and my Mom had successfully forced me to make friends. From what I remember of that period of my life, there was a chunk of time when you were the only positive thought in my life. Sure, as I grew older I got more experiences with things that I liked -- like riding my bicycle -- and the need for thinking of all the times that I had been around you reduced, but it never quite went away. In fact, even when I was an undergrad (i.e., I was doing my bachelors) years I often wanted to tell my Mom "I don't EVER want to like another girl that much again -- but if I do, then I'm going to marry her."

No girl has ever really filled that void that you left behind, and perhaps I have even been the Wandering Aengus about this, but the fond memories of the relaxed times that I have had with you I shall perhaps have forever -- for you gave me a tranquility, a peace of mind from the things that caused me to stay on edge long before I was five (things like how I was treated by my Dad's side of the family and how they behaved with my Mom; things like how our Grandma treated her daughters; the fact that there had recently been a divorce in the family and that since the divorced Aunt was someone my Mom could have a long conversation with I had figured that my parents were next; the fact that my paternal cousins had not changed their attitude towards guns and that I thus risked getting shot at again; the fact that I could not trust my Mom to keep herself safe, given how she had gotten into your pond -- and I had not known that it was too shallow for her to drown in, and she did not tell me that for about 17 years, despite all my complaints about recurring nightmares -- without knowing how to swim, and thus, apparently, risked the life of the person whom I cared about most in the world; and things like how my seemingly sadistically sarcastic Mom used to taunt me about being mad, every time I goofed up on an academic question, thus increasing my, then seemingly rational, fear that I would be sent away to the Pabna mental ward, where I would become like the escaped psychopath whom I had seen from about 33 feet away -- you never forget eyes like his), a longing for human contact that gave me comfort despite my unease with the people and things around me. I suppose the closest analogy that I know of is that famous line from the movie Casablanca: "We'll always have Paris."

Well, a lot has changed over the years. Thoughts of longing for human company have evaporated, and I have found joys in the pursuit of things that I had perhaps forever thought unattainable by me. When I feel a certain sense of serenity, however -- sometimes even mixed in with a slight bit of tension -- I remember you, and all the times we had. It's like peace of mind and you are some times inseparable. You can't exactly blame me for it -- because during my formative years your company was pretty much the only kind of serenity I had ever known. Over the years I have tried many things that I have found extremely pleasurable, and some of these (sports and intellectual activities) have granted pleasures that are not just cerebral, but extremely guttural, and border-line carnal; but while with the years pursuits and sources of pleasure come and go I am left with the thought that you remain like a constant -- not like an evening star that comes and then goes away but, rather, like a navigational constant.

Your company was perhaps one of the few pleasures that I had known in life that did not also accompany pleasure's flip side -- pain. When I ski up a hill I actually have to be at it all day in order to feel the endorphins going; when I look down steep ski slope, or a fall, I have to work for months to ensure that I will survive when I am there; when I feel that tingling sensation, that twitching of my eyelids, that dancing of my eyebrows, that pleasure of elongating my breath through that asphyxiating feeling from a shortness of breath, I actually have to have worked for months to get to feel that excitement that I get when I am finally able to make sense of a physical concept or phenomenon. The pleasantness that I felt from being around you, however, I did not have to work for. Sweetheart, I just realized this, you are my drug -- and I had never thought I would ever condone anything that would confer pleasure without effort, but like a narcotic that delivers a high without the effort of climbing a rock face, remembering you some how delivers a calmness without the pain of working for me -- though thinking about those times just comes to me, under certain (perhaps triggering) conditions, and this is not something that I actively pursue. Come to think of it, that ability to relax to that extent was something that I could perhaps only achieve around you -- and whenever I am reminded of times that I spent with you; no amount of extreme sports, neither any amount of academic pursuit, has ever delivered something like that. I just thought I would share that with you.

I don't know if you can exactly relate to what I mean (well, I hope you can, but from a more accessible source -- especially given that you live with immediate family) but this song, the tune, was one recent thing that triggered your memories, and that is why I felt the need to write -- the song conveys the mood, and the video shows something that I would love to do.

Wingsuit proximity flying by Jokke Sommer

Regards,

The boy who could have fallen asleep in your arms.