My orphaned life!
As much as I talk to the Bangladeshis' at home and abroad, the signals they send out, reminds me of a common terminology (“whatever”) that Americans use a lot. This is a lingo that American teenagers use to express their sense of frustration, however the adults use it too, when they do not or can not make a sense of complicated or semi complicated issues. Most of the time Bangladeshis' frustration would be expressed as “the country is screwed up, I don't give a damn, let them do whatever they want, Allah is displeased with us etc”. Almost all the comments would send a signal of learned helplessness, hopelessness, sadness, irritability.
It seems to me that the fundamental problem is that we did not know who is/was our father. Even Pakistan accepted a person as a father, but when a thirty eight years old adult struggles to know the identity of his/her father, the sadness and the confusion could be paramount. When the mothers or the adoptees provide conflicting information, no wonder even as an adult I / we suffer from confusion and lack of sense of a collective identity and subsequent complications ensues.
Let me elaborate how my/our growth and development remain stunted secondary to the mixed parental messages. From my birth, for less than four years, I accepted someone as my father and he was assassinated. During November 7, 1975 someone showed up and announced “I am your long lost father”. As I am getting to know him, perhaps as an adopted parent, he started mingling with “collaborators” and promised “I'll make things (politics) difficult.” As if, my birth and, my life as an orphan was not complicated enough, it seemed Allah just accepted his utterances right away and things got really “difficult”, and of course he was assassinated too! Then my uncle showed up and announced his surrogate fatherhood.
Subsequently, my biological sister, who was abroad and luckily survived, and my adopted mother fought bitterly to establish their claim over me, and that fight continued. I stayed with both of them for years, neither is better than the other. When I stay with my biological sister, she seems to continue to do the same mistakes that my original father did (too soft on family members) and did not learn from the death of my father. Also she dwells in the past, unnecessarily. As I like to mature up faster, and my biological father would have liked that, this process of dwelling hinders my growth. She suffered a lot to take care of me, almost gave her life several times, I certainly appreciate that. She seems to trust people very easily, but recently showing some maturity, perhaps age related wisdom kicked in.
After analysing all these I came to the conclusion that the optimal development only happens when the biological and emotional processes run parallel. For example when two toddlers play and break something, and mommy asks, “Who did it?” They will always point fingers at each other, as they are not emotionally grown up yet to take the responsibility of collective mistakes. It is alright to accept these denial and projection as psychological defence mechanisms from children. However, when two adults or grand adults do the same they are called pathological, denial and projection could be the most pathological defence mechanism in adults.
Now what do I want? Please allow me to grow up, I could still survive, perhaps you can not give me love and tenderness, as you did not, probably, receive it, however give me honesty and truth, I would still grow up fine, even without a father, who's killers will be punished soon.
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