It’s 1:49AM and I can’t sleep. It’s a very usual thing for me, I guess. I have developed this habit of staying up at night a few years ago. I don’t really remember how I got this habit, surely not from studying. I used to talk to people on Facebook and other sites, especially foreigners who live in places with 12 hours of time difference. After a while I realized I didn’t need more than 4 hours of sleep a day. Well, that realization might be wrong but at that time when the habit was sinking into my daily routine, it seemed ingenious.

I would like to categorize myself as a different sort of hyperactive person. There are people who think for a while then take a long time out before actualizing their thoughts. Then there are other kind of people who like to rush out to do something new as soon as the idea has acquired a form in their minds. Sadly, I don’t belong to either of the types. I will come to the explanation of my exact type after a flashback.

When I was as school, someone once inspired me enough to lead me start writing diary. I am forever indebted to that person for giving me my first diary, which was just a small notebook. I was around the age of 13, and my vocabulary was fairly limited, just enough to write small essays for school. I am not particularly an observant person, which might be a reason why my book reading habit didn’t contribute to my vocabulary as much as it should have at that time. With my limited vocabulary of Bangla I used to write about incidents that were a big deal for me. For example, I wrote an elaborate entry about one very stormy evening. All the windows were open when the Kal Boishakhi storm struck, the door to my room got stuck shut. I was so scared at that time, I had felt impelled to write down the incident to dissipate my feelings. After this I kept diaries for years, although with irregular entries, but

That’s the term. Dissipating the feelings. If it were just a few years ago then I wouldn’t have admitted it, but the fact is that I am an emotionally volatile person. Actually I hadn’t known this before I had my first romantic encounter, and eventually a bad break up. After a few months of my breaking up, I was brave enough to look back at the memories. It was only then that I understood my intense emotional nature can be a big hurdle in life. Interestingly, the beginning of the relationship was exactly the same time when I stopped keeping diaries.

It’s around 3:00AM now, and I am still wide awake. So what went wrong with my good old way of life, when I had everything at least remotely in a framework? Not just any framework, a routine that I had respect enough to follow every day. What caused this total disregard for anything structurized?

As a matter of fact, the answer is in my first love. At the time I met my first love, I was fresh out of high school, waiting for admission tests, full of energy but no place to exert it with full force. Even my parents hadn’t been able to guide towards something constructive, other than studying of course. Only, conventional way of studying never appealed to me. I had to experience something in order to learn it, no matter how many books I read I just had to try out whatever I had to learn. In the current context of Bangladeshi education, this was as near as impossible as it could be. As a result, my subconscious associated my relationship as a way of venting out my feelings, in contrary to writing entries in a diary.

This is a perfectly normal thing to happen in one’s life. Human relationships are supposed to be media of emotion. All I did was switch to this medium, that’s all. But the transition happened only one way, not the other way around. So after that small episode in my small life time ended, I did not revert to a different way to express myself. I had forgotten how to write for myself.

I will start writing once again, but not in the confinement of my personal diary. I want my voice to be heard, because my voice in the herald of the forces that drive me. I want to share my view and philosophy about life with people so that I can understand myself a little better. I want to learn the art of expressing one’s self.