I can fondly remember the triumphs of my freshmen year of high school. That ego boost from getting a club leader position, winning Model UN accolades, and joining the gym. Ah, such times! I used to sacrifice so much of my sleep just so I could feel like I was slightly better than everyone else. Unlike everyone else trying to cram for their college applications, these things gave me a sense of profound life. Why would it not, for I was a mere nobody before all that happened. Those times, I could pat myself on the back and pretend all was well, and I could feel my heart beating every second – I was alive.

Someday between the 13th and the 15th I assume, my life was forever thrown into a continuum of tragedies, with the first being the lockdown. I started to develop what I call my freeloading best friend, anxiety. I always had anxiety as a kid but the weight of a world changed overnight hit me, and it hit me very hard. I stopped using my social media accounts in fear of appearing “redundant” to all the trends that kept on appearing on my newsfeed and for the first time in months, I stopped bothering to check what was going on in the world. I felt like my duty as this vanguard of right versus wrong has come to pass therefore I stopped. I also stopped being an overtly pretentious 9th grader because clearly I needed friends at that time and being “too intellectual” would hurt my chances of sustaining any. I also decided to do home workouts because I imagined the awe in the faces of my enemies in school once they saw me getting absolutely jacked! Through all of this, I kept having anxiety attacks but that’s fine because it happens, right? Happens to the best, and only the best of us.

I decided I want something better with my life so I finally gave in to my mother’s whinings and agreed to leave Scholastica to go to Canada. My ego boost at this point was incomprehensible. “Imagine getting a liberal arts-approached education in high school”, I thought to myself. I started to daydream of myself getting accepted into Yale’s Class of 2027 and landing some major finance job. My dream of becoming a millionaire was right at the corner. I quickly started to search online about which AP courses to take, what SAT scores would I need and what GPAs do they accept. I didn’t even fill out my application yet and here I was searching through what to do. At that state, I debated whether I wanted to go into becoming a Chartered Accountant or a corporate lawyer. Most of the seniors I met through Model UNs are studying law so I decided I should too work on studying law in high school once I get to Canada. A fresh new opportunity, in the palm of my hand.

Flash forward to the end of the half-yearly exams during my sophomore year. I was finally done with Cambridge and its hellish education system. I could finally leave. By then my acceptance was in, and I was to start my classes any day now. I, of course, wasn’t told that it wasn’t a rigorous process so I naturally felt deserving of whatever I got. I still remember telling everyone about my departure from school and how sad people got. I would be lying if I said that I didn’t feel like going back at that moment. But the vivid fantasies of the Western life gripped me tight in its embrace so I refused to entertain those feelings. Needless to say, I did spend some quality time talking with a bunch of my friends so I guess looking back, I wasn’t entirely selfish.

A new chapter began – online classes at a Canadian high school. Not entirely a high school but rather a secondary virtual school but my credits would still transfer to my high school’s transcript so it wasn’t bad. The downside was the time difference. My classes would begin at 7:40 PM and end at 2:25 AM. This essentially killed off my prime social hours and as a person that required a constant flow of talking to people, it was a horrible experience. As a person, I am very hyperactive so to sit for nearly 2 hours straight staring at a screen where teachers mostly assigned us self-paced work, the experience worked against me very badly. At the time, my anxiety took to its next level where I started to ponder about life and death and it got worse over time. My friends and family advised me to start contributing to the extracurricular fields there. Overjoyous, I ask my school if there are any. They email me:

“Those opportunities are not available right now. They will this September.”

This is where my life started to feel downhill, and it has since. By not having anything to find excitement in life about, I turned myself into a perpetual state of self-conflict. Having nothing to feel good about myself anymore, I resorted to my friends. But it just wasn’t the same anymore. They were club leaders themselves now and contributing to the school on a grander scale compared to me. I envied this self-assurance they now had. Sometimes, I genuinely felt there was this aura dividing me from them and I felt naked in front of them. It also didn’t help the fact that most of the study content they had for sophomore students was laughably easy. I asked if they had AP courses but to my misfortune, my school didn’t have them anymore. I checked that they had IB but even that was restricted for those that are in 9th grade. My miscalculation was set in motion and it was far too late to rejoin my old school again. At that very point in time, I knew deep down I was screwed but I refused to panic and decided to go on an experimental phase.

Before entering a phase full of experimentations, I contracted COVID-19. During the three weeks that I had it, I suffered more mental anguish than I did physical anguish. My death anxiety started to take a toll on my behavior with people but just to elaborate in short, I lost a lot of people during that time. I finally entered the crescendo of my silent but deadly fall from grace. My grades fell badly and my hopes and dreams of going to Yale just faded away. I forgot at that point that I wanted to join Yale. That enthusiasm seemed to be void of any flavor to it. I felt like I was drifting in this sea of nothingness and whatever was to come was going to be terrible anyway. Sure enough, my student visa got rejected the first time, and due to the huge queue of applications, it was sure to take at least 6 months. I felt like bashing my head every single day and I don’t particularly enjoy a good sleep that summer. Every single day, people were just happy with their lives even if that was superficial. I didn’t even have a superficial smile, to begin with.

I started to experiment with whatever I had. I decided to start blogging about the films I watched. I decided to forsake the enjoyment of the masses and simply cater to the “gourmet” world of films and anime. I didn’t care if that made me boring or not, I just wanted to feel like I am still something. I started to watch a ton of cinematic masterpieces and don’t get me wrong, I still love such films to this day. But it certainly didn’t feel like me so I decided to give my old passion for photography a try. Christopher Doyle made me fall in love with the film aesthetic he famously used for a bunch of Wong Kar Wai’s films so I decided to try taking some of those approaches. It didn’t work out so I thought about making a film about my loneliness and misery. It didn’t work out so I simply put my camera back into its bag. I thought about preparing for debating in advance before joining the debate club at my new school. I asked my friends if they were interested in practicing with me. They, most likely understanding that I was no use to them since I could not be a teammate, simply dodged the suggestion entirely. It didn’t work out so I decided I find some kind of work.

I wanted to do a sort of internship so I asked around and found an “internship” at a stock exchange. Except, it wasn’t. It was just me going to Dhaka Stock Exchange and sitting there for 2 hours learning about how they use their stock trading program. No, those weren’t job preparation sessions. They were literally, interface tutorials. But then I found out that there was a gym that expertized in combat fitness so I enthusiastically, joined. The problem was, that the lockdowns at that time could not excuse my degrading mental state as an anomaly so, after barely 2 weeks of having sessions with the finest instructors, I had to quit. It also didn’t help the fact that it was one hour away from my place and my family, already afraid about me contracting COVID once, decided against it.

I started to gain a lot of weight during this time. I already started to gain a lot during 2020 but after contracting the virus, I for some reason gained 5 kilos. I correlate this to my stress eating at the time. Finding no point in life anymore, I just ate and ate. My pants stopped fitting me and I stopped looking good in the mirror too. Every morning I felt like I was metamorphosizing into this monstrous vermin that I could no longer recognize. My self-esteem was crippled physically. I noticed how instead of feeling angry in any argument, I resorted to the corner of my room where I would keep crying. I started to feel terrified of the world. Where was the younger, bolder, and naive me? I searched desperately within me. Where was the risk-taking, yet calculative, I went off to? I didn’t know. I started to see my friends thriving in their lives. From confused 9th graders, they started to resemble the seniors I once admired. Part of me couldn’t stop gushing about them to my mother, and part of me heavily despised them. Intrusive thoughts of them feeling even a fraction of the terrifying Hell I was locked in entertained me daily. I didn’t have any terrible interactions with anyone during this time because face it if I lost even this amount of people now, I will have nothing anymore.

During the summer one good thing did happen which was I got to set some discipline with my work ethic. I guess staying up on Discord and seeing a bunch of my buddies helped me set a mindset to create study habits without studying for which my first semester started off very strong. I started to dabble in podcasts and reading at the time. This, for some reason, stuck with me and although I have not been consistent, it is still a constant habit of mine. I also started to walk for hours on my treadmill instead of running. Adding roughly 10 thousand steps to my life was a great addition that although didn’t benefit me then, it surely does now.

Fall came in, it was soon October. My birthday came. I turned 18th, an age I desperately wanted to taste ever since I saw the perks my sister and cousins got once they turned 18. It felt very hazy for some reason. I didn’t want any gifts because I got what I wanted – getting out of Dhaka and into Canada in 3 days. That day, I didn’t feel that sad for some reason. I was smiling the whole day. My family threw me a surprise that wasn’t much but I love a minimalist birthday over any grand fiasco. Still gleaming with joy, I grabbed the knife to cut the cake. My thoughts were flying up and down on this high. I kept thinking and thinking as I cut the cake.

My name is Tahir Ahsan Soumen. I am 18 years old. I am in my junior year of high school. I have no friends I can share my thoughts with. I have no family I can recognize as family. I have no one to stay up for me while I try to survive another night of chaotic thoughts. I simply have no one. I have nothing to show to colleges. I have nothing that sets me apart from any other high schooler. I simply have no worth. I have no confidence to tackle the world any longer. I simply am a hollow shell of who I thought I was.

My name is Tahir Ahsan Soumen and I have no intrinsic worth in this world.