An Escape Through Love

By Labiba Rifah Nanjeeba

Love, hate, desire, and fear are powerful emotions that shape a person's life, determining whether they will always be lost on their way to peace or whether peace will come to their home as a guest. It's not possible for one either to harvest them naturally or to let go of them easily. As a result, emotions, like the tangled wires on Dhaka's streets, are complicated, and the more you try to solve them, the more they confuse you. One way to deal with complicated emotions is to ignore the thoughts that consume you or to let them flow and take control of you.

During the quarantine, I succumbed to the overly complicated emotions, all of them hit me like a bullet and took my peace. Sitting at home, watching anime, playing video games, and reading manga could not help me. The undying plague that kept us bonded to the four walls of the house, causing thousands of deaths, was something that took control of my mental health. At that ominous moment, I encountered my best friend, who kept me sane in the midst of the chaos of my own.

On a long day in the summer, when the clock was ticking, I could hardly breathe and was sweating from the heat of the ever-charming Sun piercing through the window of my bedroom, but that didn’t bother me at all. My mind was preoccupied with all kinds of thoughts, especially the ones with dreadful images of a four-legged monster.

My sister was about to bring home the one being I fear most, an animal with four legs, sharp nails, the one human call cat but sister named him “Yuki,” Japanese name meaning snow as he had furs as white as snow. However, the thought of a cat craved nothing but horror in my mind, and for days, I kept my distance, watching him walk and play with others. Sometimes he tried coming to me with the most doe eyes and appealed with his soft "meaow" to play with him, but all I could do was to ignore him.

Despite the fact that I dreaded cats, I slowly began to form a beautiful bond with him but still kept my distance. But one incident that change my entire psyche was one of when I was going through my depression phase, locked the door and cried for nights. I could do nothing but stare at the dark laptop screen with a blank mind; it was then as if Yuki came to rescue me from the constant panic, trauma, and insecurities. I don’t think without him, I would have ever escaped from the dark abyss of panic, trauma, and depression. With the power of his tiny paws, he taught me that love was unconditional and it may come from the most unexpected places, even from the one place where you are afraid to roam.

My tiny friend made me realize what unconditional love is, no matter how complicated my emotions are, just being there for me was enough to smooth my eyes and my heart. In our large world, there are some small moments that make the whole world seem meaningful, and those precious moments are the ones that drive us further in our lives. To find those moments of peace, one just needs to keep their heart open, to welcome all complex emotions; that’s what will perhaps lead you one day to the one moment, which you will cherish for life.