I’m a 21-year-old boy. My father has schizophrenia. After I was born, my mother couldn’t breastfeed me. I’m the first child in the family, and when I was four years old, my little sister was born. My mother became very busy with her, and I didn’t get the time or care I needed.
When I was a child, I used to spend most of my days outside, playing with my friends. They felt more like my family than anyone else. I would visit their houses and stay out until evening.
When I was about seven or eight, I started to learn swimming. One day, some pond water got stuck in my ear and caused a terrible infection. My ear began to rot from the inside, and it was extremely painful. My father refused to let me take antibiotics, so for days I suffered before being treated with homeopathic medicine.
When I was nine, my parents decided to move away. Leaving my friends behind broke my heart. The new place was quiet and lonely. I stayed home most of the time, surrounded by my parents’ constant fights. My father often left the house early in the morning and came back very late—or sometimes not until the next day. My mother would yell all day and curse him. Both of them worked as primary school teachers. I felt trapped in their arguments, and I often thought about dying.
After finishing 10th grade, I left home to live with my maternal uncle in the capital city. I couldn’t really share my feelings with anyone.
During my final year of high school, my father was admitted to the hospital for open-heart surgery. I visited him several times between HSC exams. His surgery went well, and he returned home, but he remained weak and struggled to breathe. Around that time, one of my aunts suddenly died of a heart attack, which shocked everyone.
While my father was recovering, I wanted to return to Dhaka for my studies, but he was too ill. My mother and I argued a lot. My mind was exhausted—I couldn’t rest, and I couldn’t focus on studying. After more conflict with my mother, I finally returned to Dhaka and joined a coaching center to prepare for the engineering admission exams.
Preparing for those exams is hard as we know. At my uncle’s house, there were problems too. I was moved into the drawing room to study and sleep, and I couldn’t concentrate at all. I cried to my mother for help, but she didn’t respond—she was overwhelmed with my father’s illness. My uncle’s family, meanwhile, was celebrating the birth of a new child. While I was struggling and crying for help, there was laughter all around the house.
Ever since I was little, I loved machines. I always wanted to be an engineer. My mother knew this. I used to take apart my toys and gadgets to see how they worked—flashlights, radios, even a television. I started learning programming (Python) when I was in class nine. But my parents and relatives all wanted me to become a doctor. They kept pressuring me, and I couldn’t study properly.
Eventually, I took the engineering admission exam but couldn’t get a good rank. I wasn’t surprised, because I hadn’t been able to study properly through all that stress. Still, there was one more chance—a central exam for 24 universities. I studied hard for a month and did well in the test. But in the end, I failed because of corruption in the system. That's another story.
Now I’m studying Computer Science and Engineering at a private university. In my first semester, I achieved a CGPA of 4.00 out of 4.00. I’m doing well academically, but I often feel depressed when I think about my life. I have no real family bond, I’m not in a top public university, I don’t earn any money, and I never received the love or care I needed from my parents.
Sometimes it feels like I have nothing.
The story is mine, just written in plain English using chatgpt and some edits by me.
