My friend and her determination

I have a friend who is very cheerful and fun loving. She is funny and has every amusing answer possible for everything we talk about. Everyone around her thinks that she is the happiest and the luckiest person. Even I felt so, until one evening while having a cup of drink, she disclosed all her history to three of us. I think she drank a bit too much that day.


Her father was a civil servant earning a good salary and she has 2 siblings but they had never enough to eat, owing to her parent’s addiction to alcohol. Her parents drank too much and her father lost his job when she was in class II. It resulted in selling everything in the house including the furniture. She told us that she could still remember the scene as clearly as it was just yesterday, she was coming home from school when she saw some people carrying away all the furniture from their house.


A few years later both her parent died. She described how she used to work for dinner at a neighbour’s place after the school and shared the food among the three of them. They were all very young to support themselves and an elderly relative took them in who was in no better condition then them. Her bother decided to find a job and join in police and her sister got married, a minor. But she did not give up.


She had a few good friends who supported her with the stationery and clothes in school and she got herself enrolled in a boarding school after she finished her primary school. She said that she used to spend her holidays in her friend’s house because she never had a home of her own.


After she finished her high school, she joined NIE and became a teacher. She also met her husband there. But couple of years ago she lost her husband to some disease that the doctor’s were not able to diagnose. She has two school going children.


Her story is a tale of suffering and her determination to over come it. She had all the three of us sobbing throughout her story.


If anyone sees her today, no one would believe what she went through as a child. I am glad that she could endure all the hardships and become what she is today.