The Orphan

22.11.2023

2 hours overtime even though I was thinking I was just going to go straight home after work tonight as the next two evenings are booked.

I keep on thinking about it. In the film ‘Raja Babu’ (Gentleman King) , there is a spoilt, uneducated rich kid that won’t take life seriously, treats it like a pastime. There is a woman that sees that he has never achieved anything in his life. He loves her. He chases her. At first, he fools her into thinking he has the job of an educated person. Then, she finds out the truth. Then, she rejects him. Because he is nothing. But she also insults the boy’s father, telling the father that his son, who he loves so dearly, isn’t worth spit. At first, the boy doesn’t care that the woman insulted his father. He is spoilt and selfish. One day, suddenly, someone tells the spoilt rich kid, an only child, that his parents adopted him. He didn’t know it before. The son realises what his mother and father did for him, that they gave him the life they gave him even though he wasn’t even their own blood. He learns about the debt that he owes them, a debt of love he can never repay. He turns his face away from the woman that rejected him and insulted that father of his. He puts on a farm labourer’s clothes and works on his father’s farms. But now the story changes. Seeing that he has changed, now the woman loves him. She wants him back. But she has insulted his father. He can’t forgive her. Of course, this is a film. Eventually love wins. The father forgives the woman for his son so the son forgives her as well. The lesson is learnt. It is an Indian love story: where parents are respected, where everyone sacrifices for love, where everyone forgives. Maybe that happens in some people’s lives.

Sitting around doing chain decorations for Christmas somewhere. Thinking about things in the corner as the hands fumbled over those chains over and over again. There is so much to make, to do, to complete. And yet, I still couldn’t get out of bed again in the morning and skipped breakfast again. I have lost weight from not eating it. My underpants were falling down today. People have commented that I am getting thinner.

The new shoes I got have been pinching my feet as they mould themselves around my posture. I hobbled around like a baby learning how to walk. But after about a half day, the pain started feeling good. It made me feel alive again. Then, when I went home and walked back, the pain completely stopped. It was psychosomatic – it wasn’t real.

I had to fill out a 5 yearly form for my medication. And I didn’t know what condition I had on the form. I had to look up the medication and find out what it was for. It is a thyroid condition, nothing serious. I just take the medicine and don’t think about it. The symptoms are supposed to be that you gain weight, feel cold all the time, are tired all the time. I wonder if I really have that condition because I have been trying to put on weight for several years now without any luck and I never really feel tired.

I had an intellectual conversation with someone today. A debate. Unlike other people, I like arguing. I was in the debate club at school, I studied the law, I made arguments as a researcher. Made a welcome change to have an actual intellectual debate at that particular place after a while. There used to be someone for that at first every time I met her – my closest friend there – but she went. And sometimes, when they leave, that is the end of the friendship, because otherwise, the wrong signals would go out.

I was wondering whether I have recently had a mid-life crisis and whether it is over yet if I had it.

The funny thing about life is that the only remedy for a woman troubles you is another woman. That’s the paradox of heterosexual male desire.