The Haunting of The Evaluation Room

Let’s talk about some haunting memories of my life. Don’t worry I won’t start any ghostly horror filmy dramas. Although that’d be more fun, right? Actually I want to talk about those haunting memories that actually happened in my life and made me numb, horrified, broken, stumbling, shaken, and devastated and what not for a long time. We all have some incidents of our life which happened out of the blue and even though after some time we somehow managed to get over that, still whenever we remember even a little glimpse of those moments, we get lost, frozen, and kept thinking how we could’ve prevented those things from happening.

I guess many of you’re feeling me right now. Remembering those traumatizing memories. But don’t get me wrong. The purpose of my writing is not to bring back those memories of your and cause you pain. All I want is to you to know that, you’re not alone with memories that haunts you, we all have. Although it’s not natural to have the same kind of haunted memories but still, we know the feeling, I know the feeling.

Let me explain one of my traumatizing experiences which left me ashamed, helpless, devastated, broken, angry, and many other feelings which I can’t even express through words. Although I may not tell exactly what happened but I’m going to explain those moments of pain, and how it made me feel.

It was a happy day. I went for something important, I was feeling confident, and I even had plans to do some fun after finishing my work. But who knew my plans of making happy memories will end-up being a haunted memory? Let me give you a hint to better understand my situation. Most of us gets afraid of being evaluated right? Because that’s when someone gives an opinion about us, and that can change a lot of things. So, I went to get evaluated. Trust me, I wasn’t scared or nervous. Yes, I was a bit tensed but that’s what we feel before something like that, right? When my turn came, I entered the room and my evaluators were sitting there. I greeted them and smiled. Then my acid test began. It’s been a while but every time I wonder how much toxicity it takes to completely destroy a person’s will-power and confidence just because you’re superior and more powerful than the person sitting in front of you. Those who are in power, I don’t know why they find it abnormally joyful to mentally break someone else.

Yes, that’s what happened with me. Those people didn’t even think once to insult me in front of almost 50 people! Just because my answers didn’t match with their own point of view! It was more like I didn’t go there to prove my worth, I went there to make them feel pleased about themselves. Some people who are powerful than others always have one kind of opinion for a group of people, and they categorize everyone under that opinion without analyzing a few differences. Ironically, those people were positioned to evaluate others! They never think how it can affect people, not everyone has the same nerve to tolerate everything. There’s no doubt that those people are more knowledgeable, wise and educated. But they used those valuable achievements only to sooth their ego, nothing else. That day a lot of people faced the same incident while being evaluated by them! Even though I realized that it wasn’t all my fault still I felt like the most useless person in the world. I was so devastated that I hated myself, cursed myself, made sure to do and think everything to make myself feel like a garbage. I screamed internally, I beat up myself to sooth the pain. I guess many of us have gone through this addiction of “Hurt to sooth”. It’s like my external pain will mitigate my internal pain. My silent screams made me to explode mentally, made me tired. But pain is the most stubborn thing, it doesn’t go before you’ve become lost entirely.

But time is the best healer. I overcame that day and those painful months. I re-lived those moments constantly. Yes, it wasn’t easy, it’s never easy. I still feel like a useless human being who couldn’t handle that situation. Even still I think and continually analyze, what if I have prepared myself a bit more, what if I tackled the situation a bit better, what if it didn’t ever happen with me?

I don’t think of myself as a weak person. Still my strong mentality sometimes doesn’t cooperate with me and makes me feel the worst of all! I know it feels like a small thing, but you can’t deny that even you’ve some memories which may seems silly, but you’ve suffered A LOT! That’s the thing! The reasons behind the pain doesn’t matter, only the pain matters. Because only I know what I’ve gone through, only you know how much you’ve suffered. But let’s take a moment, close your eyes and feel those pain. And then think how much you’ve achieved till then, how much you’ve grown up and became stronger. Let’s get drowned in the ocean of our pain, but don’t lose your soul. Be proud of yourself. Smile and say, I’ve survived and I’ll do that again! Honestly, you don’t only have to cherish happy memories, haunted memories deserve to be reminisced as well.

Fahmina Ahmed Papia is one of our Content Writers, and she’s an Associate of HR & Finance, Voice of Business and Marketing Student of the University of Dhaka.