I Have to Get Better

06.05.2024

why do you drink
so much
what do you find
in it
if not the bones
if not the corpse
the corpse of
my grandfather
that died from a stroke
from drinking
why do you smoke so much
what do you find in it
if not the corpse
the corpse of my grandmother
who died from smoking
too much
the only drinking i do
is to look in your eyes
full of intoxication
when i am drunk
it is with those eyes
that smile
that laughter
that pain i feel
when you are so close
to me
and i don’t have you
in my arms
to drink again and again
from your eyes

Something happened today which was disappointing and very upsetting.

I was going to go straight home, but because I was distracted, I forgot a letter I needed for tomorrow in my locker. So I had to go back in. That wasted an hour.

When I got there, it was late. I didn’t feel like going home. I went and sat there in Trafalgar Square by myself for thirty minutes. I was looking at the water and thinking how beautiful it would be to go in that water and never come back out of it, like Virginia Woolf who drowned herself.

I kept on thinking about the film Collateral with Tom Cruise where he asked how long your corpse would be on the metro before someone realised that you were dead, or whether they would do anything even if they knew you were dead.

I keep on thinking that I am getting better, but everything is getting worse. The nausea came back.

There is something wrong. I used to be normal. Things didn’t affect me this much before. And I know what is wrong, but there is no cure and I can’t do anything about it.

So I sat there. And then, I remembered that I would have children at the end of this year. I have waited long enough. I’m not waiting any more. I promised myself those children on the pain of death. And straight away, I got up and got myself dinner. Because to have those children, I need to be at my most fertile. I need to be in tip top shape. I have to give them the best that my body can produce. I can’t starve and mope around wallowing in my own pity for myself and my situation.

I have to get better now.

I have to start getting up in the morning on time. I have to beat the habit of lying there moping about things and then skipping breakfast. I have to make sure I exercise every morning. I have to do my language learning and reading to keep my brain sharp because you have to exercise each part of your body.

Look at me right now. I haven’t shaved in a week. I haven’t had a shower in a week. I am finding it difficult to motivate myself to do anything outside of work. I am becoming undisciplined, the type of person I don’t like.

I have to stop caring about people that don’t love or like me back. It has always been the same problem. They never like you back if you like them or love them. Every one I have been with has asked me out or hung around me first when I wasn’t that interested in them. Every one I have ever been interested in has said no. All four of them.

You have to forgot that they don’t love you. You have to forget about them. You can’t keep on hoping that something is going to happen. With Helen and Girl 2, I have a really dysfunctional relationship with both of them at the moment. I can’t forget that they wouldn’t go out with me. And Girl 2 judges me and criticises me all the time and is obviously still angry at me. What about Helen? Helen is never going to be around and she always hangs around her white men that follow her around all the time anyway. She does not care that I love her. I want to believe that she does. I don’t want to give up.

Do you know the peculiar thing about Helen and Girl 2 which struck me today? I never think about them in bodily terms. I don’t even look at their bodies. That is not natural. I am a man with a high libido. I love women. That proves that things are dysfunctional. Because with Potential Girl, who is not white, I do think of her in bodily terms. Which is natural.

When was the last time I even had a proper conversation with Helen or Girl 2? I haven’t had one with Helen in about five months or so. It is about the same time period with Girl 2. They are both in the past.

I am writing this all down rationally. Not through feeling. In actual facts. Obviously, your mind in this area does not work rationally. Even while I am writing, I still want to be with them.

What is happening in my life at the moment? Last week some drunk woman messaged me on Tinder. She must have seen my like about a week before she got drunk and wrote to me. She is white. That is the only message I have had from a white woman after being on Tinder for five months. And because she wrote to me when she was drunk, I am not going to write back to her. Because I can put up with Helen, Girl 2 and Potential Girl drinking even though I don’t like it because I know them and I care about them. But I am not putting up with it in a stranger that I don’t even know. Today, some Afro-Carribbean woman matched with me. She is very beautiful, but, like most of these women nowadays, she is taller than me. So, again, I have another Helen – taller than me and the same age. Is she even real though? That’s the question with this dating app.

There is a quote in John Wick 4. It goes something like:

Those who cling to life cling to death

Those who cling to death cling to life

The more and more I keep on thinking about that quote, the more and more I keep on thinking that it is true. I want to cling to death. And that is why I live. And those that cling to life? What do they really know about living, if they have not been raped by death?

It is said in a Hindi song in the film Guide: Today once again I have the desire to live/Today once again I have the intention of dying.

Surgery Required

11.04.2024

So, it turns out I’m going to have to have surgery on my leg. The doctor was a Subcontinental woman. Did she break the news to me in a nice way? No. I had about two minutes with her. And during that time, all she did was tell me off and make it out to be my fault. When it wasn’t my fault in any way at all. That’s what they are like. I can say it because I am Subcontinental too. You don’t get any sympathy. You get blame. I’m used to it. Even in the Indian movies, all the girlfriends of the heroes do is to criticise them and tell them off.

But at least two things didn’t happen: I didn’t die and they didn’t have to cut the leg off. I knew everything was okay. It is just the pain. And I will just have to put up with that. Why? Because life is pain. The only thing that can happen now is complications with the surgery and side effects, but there is a good chance that nothing bad will happen and it should all be okay.

Do you know how I developed this problem in my leg? I loved a non-Indian woman. And she didn’t love me back. Then my grandparents died and I got sick. And then I put on a lot of weight. Which ruined my leg. So that’s where the problem in the leg developed. I am still suffering from the past. And those people that tell you to forget about the past? What other problem have me and the Indian men in this country, and the Dalits or the Untouchables in India had except for the fact that no one will love us? The people that don’t love us are telling us how to solve our problems. And to forget the past and the present where they don’t love us. When our problem is that they are not giving us love. What a fucking joke.

Do you know what guilt is? When my grandmother was dying from cancer, I was living with her. She couldn’t sleep in the nights without a man in the house. One time, I came back home and I was talking to her before I went up to study in my bedroom. I talked to her for about half an hour. Because I felt sorry for her and thought she was lonely. She told my mother afterwards that when I was talking to her, she was going through the most torturous pain. But she wouldn’t tell me. She just kept on nodding at what I was saying. She didn’t want to hurt my feelings. I think about that over and over again. That is what guilt is. I couldn’t even see that she was in pain.

My Instagram feed is full of dating advice. It is always the same: don’t be a nice guy. Be a complete douche bag to the woman that you care about, be aloof from her, treat her like she doesn’t even matter. What a lovely world of love this Western society has created for its women. And some of these people have the gall to call me a misogynist when that is their culture and their ‘love’. Even the women themselves are saying they want the man to be like that. What a culture. If you love women, you are a sexist pig. And if you treat them like you hate them or don’t care about them at all, then you are accepted and you aren’t sexist.

I finally told someone in that context that there is someone there that I don’t like. I don’t like to talk about people behind their backs. I wouldn’t want someone doing it to me. It was a special situation of honesty. I don’t just not like them. That is me being euphemistic. And it is very unusual for me not to like someone in this industry, so that is saying a lot.

I asked my friend from another country if she would cook something for me for that context for lunch. So she said yes and she invited me to do dinner together and she would make me something then too.

I was thinking about Shiva and his stillness – the short note I wrote yesterday. He lies down below Kali when she is in her rage and in her destructive dance. He lies below the Ganga (Ganges) when she flows down from heaven. Do you know that Shiva is represented by the phallus? The lingam. That is his body. That is what is withstanding the flood of woman. How he is able to withstand the flood of woman’s power and to become united with it, to channel it and control it, to merge with it into creation, is by being the phallus below woman, completely still. It is a sexual thing. The woman is dancing on Shiva who is the phallus, or flooding down on him: that is the essence of the act of union.

I have never told anyone something peculiar about the name my mother gave me. Some of you who have been reading know how I got my name. Sunil Dutt saved the life of Mother India in the film of the same name. He rescued her from fire. While he was recovering in the hospital, she came to take care of him and then they fell in love. He played her son in the movie. The son married the mother. That’s why I call myself Oedipus and my life has been that of Oedipus. However, there is a little peculiarity in this love story. Because in the film, the mother kills the son because he rebels against tradition and culture and morality by trying to abduct the woman he loves from her wedding ceremony. My mother didn’t just name me for the one that marries Mother India. She named me for the one that rebels against Mother India too. There is a paradox in the name that she gave me. The paradox is that she named me after the rebel, he who rebels against everything and everyone. I am the middle child. I have been named after rebellion. I live for rebellion. The rebellion of love. You can’t escape from your name and the fate that has been planned and dreamt of for you. Try to escape your fate. See what happens to you. We rebel in the name of love for love. We are the warriors of love. Inquilaab zindabaad! Inquilaab sada zindabaad! Long live the Revolution! May the Revolution live forever!

How much longer can you love someone who is not in your life for more than five minutes in a week? That doesn’t talk to you? Who has rejected you twice? Who you have only talked to for about one hour in total in about six months? But are these the wrong questions? Isn’t the question, can you stop loving someone who you love? Despite everything?

Frenemies; Encouraging Research; Suffering

27.03.2024

the tree of sadness

27.03.2024

a sudden bloom of doom

a heart stretched out

with limbs and fingers

poisoned toes

which strive

through the ground

and into the mind above

the tree of sadness

the structure of pain

burnt into your being

One of my frenemies – the main one – was mean to me. I thought since I hadn’t been around her for a while, she would have gotten over her anger. She is still angry and judging me and everything I do and say. The incident today was over literally nothing. You have to be careful when you become frenemies with a woman. She would never say what she said to me to anyone else there. She is sweet tempered and kind. It was really upsetting. I would like to say that she doesn’t know how much it hurts when someone you like is mean to you. But actually, she is doing it because she knows it upsets me.

So that ruined my day. When she said it, I had an awful sinking feeling in my stomach. I suspect the reasons why she is doing it. I keep my speculations to myself.

What can I do about it? Nothing. If a man spoke to me like that, I wouldn’t put up with it. But she isn’t a man. And she is sensitive. So the best thing is to just leave it alone.

Hopefully it won’t disrupt my sleep patterns as now I have been able to sleep again properly for the past few days. The last time someone I liked was intentionally mean to me, it took seven months to get better again. You know about it. You are reading my diary.

What she said keeps on coming back over and over in my mind. They think I am still young. When you are young, it doesn’t hurt so much. Because you haven’t had hurt upon hurt piled upon you. When they say that stuff to you, it brings all of the memories from before back. It is quadruple the blow. I hope they won’t have to experience it when they are my age.

If I ever upset anyone, it is unintentionally. I would never do it on purpose, especially to a woman.

I have been talking with someone that wants to do a PhD in my subject in English literature somewhere. She has an interesting project and I have been sending her a few short messages about suggestions I have and some links about stuff that I have been reading that might be relevant.. Today she sent me a little thank you note about it. She is a very friendly young woman. I would have appreciated the message more some other day, but life is what it is.

At least Helen is never mean to me. She has been angry at me. Very angry. Once. But she is not mean. But Helen is older. She knows what it is like.

Two friends are unwell. My friend couldn’t talk to me on the phone today because she was feeling so poorly. Another friend has had some really bad health news. I couldn’t catch up with her either. Suffering is everywhere around you in this world. I have only just got better myself. But nobody cares that I suffered and how I had to get through it by myself. That is this world. I had to keep it to myself and away from all of my friends and family until I got better and told two of my friends what happened. Because all they would say is I told you so – don’t mess around with the women in this country because you are different to them and why were you so stupid to do that stuff with these women here after what happened that other time.

Why? Because I want my kids. Because Helen wouldn’t say yes. She was the only one in my life that I wanted. At the time, there was no one else that I wanted. Everyone else is just a substitute for Helen and they all came later. If she said yes, I wouldn’t have even looked at any of these other women that are causing me these problems. I’m not blaming Helen. It is just a fact.

The Festival of Colours

25.03.2024

My holidays are at the end of April. I have decided to give up on Scotland for the time being and go to Italy on holiday with family. I have said that when we get there, they can do what they want and then I will do what I want and we can just meet up at night time and in the mornings. The first two days of my holiday I will just spend with my friend in a driveable distance in the countryside and nature.

I was going to just go somewhere by myself but the thought of being a foreign country all by myself all day doesn’t particularly appeal to me.

Social Media stats:

300+ impressions on each LinkedIn Post
13 impressions on each Instagram Posts

I should actually just delete my Instagram account. It is useless.

It is the festival of colours today. Time to repair relationships and begin anew. And in fact, because I was around certain people for a while (why cover it up, Girl 3 and potential girl), I don’t feel that bad. Because even if nothing is going to happen with them, you can date them in your mind. I get on well with them. I like them. Just being around them, talking to them and looking at them makes you forget about your problems.

All my friends want me to give up on Helen. I have tried to give up on her three times. Twice by not talking to her. Once by going with someone else. Helen herself has never given me any encouragement. She has said no twice. Yet look at how stubborn and senseless the human heart is. Even now, as I am writing these facts down, I am thinking about being with Helen. I am waiting for her to change her mind.

If it is this hard to just take the first little baby steps, how hard would everything else be with her? But then, you make the excuses to yourself. She has some kind of situation. There is the thing I heard about her from someone that slipped out, whether I heard it or understood it properly or not, whether or not it is just a misunderstanding on my part or a false memory.

But maybe this is a false problem. Because she has to make all the moves now. So if she doesn’t, I can’t do anything. Those are the rules. I have already asked one more time than I am allowed to. So I just have to be around her, thinking about her and not being able to do anything. Otherwise, I would not only feel like I was bothering her, I would probably be bothering her.

Because Helen is like she is, because the situation is what it is, I am having to talk to other women. That I am not even interested in.

What am I doing to change my fate? I need to meet some new women somewhere that I am actually interested in. It is not working on the dating app. They like my profile. They even reply to my messages. But then, nothing happens. And what are they saying that is so interesting? All they are is pretty faces. It is boring and not satisfying. I have more intimate and satisfying conversations with the women I already know.

The only place I can think of is the dance studio. Someone told me not to go there and don’t use it for that. What does he know anyway? There is bound to be someone single there that I could be interested in. I really should go to the slow dancing with someone. Those celebrity women went out with the male dancers in Strictly Come Dancing even though they literally have nothing in common with each other. Because all love is is being around someone all the time on a shared project and that’s how you fall in love. Just create the intimate moments. I will be holding a woman around the waist. I will be holding her hands. We will be moving together in beautiful music, looking at each other. I am still good looking and I know how to talk to people. It is not rocket science.

I will have to think about it. Helen is extremely unlikely. Girl 3 is extremely unlikely. Potential girl is extremely unlikely. And I don’t want to ask potential girl out because if I do and she says no, I’m not going to want to talk to her again. And I’m looking at the lifestyles of these women that weren’t raised like me and I know it would be very difficult with them. But when you love someone, you make allowances for them and you compromise. If they let you – that’s the issue.

The problem for me and everyone else is that I have been raised like an Indian woman in a village. No staying out all night. No drinking. No pubs and clubs. No hanging around anywhere where there might be any women. I have been raised to stay at home and look after my family. To do things with the family. To think about the family first. And now, when it comes to having my own family, all that is creating is problems. When you become institutionalised, you can’t just get up and leave. It is who you are.

If the Indian women in this country could just have been attractive enough for me and didn’t have such arbitrary demands on me as a man, if there were more of us in this country that actually had arranged marriages so that you could actually have an actual choice with these women, I wouldn’t have any of these problems. But what can you do? You are stuck in the box that you are in.

So I can either do nothing. Or go to the dance studio. Unless I get a better idea from someone else. I will have to ask one of my friends at work what to do, some women that are just friends. Maybe they will be able to point me in the right direction.

Brain Health; What to Watch; Flowers Thrown Away; A Walk in the Cold with a Friend – 32174 Steps Today

22.02.2024

Whoever reads, I imagine it is her. Or another woman.

A lot of things I do are to ensure that I have a healthy brain. The diet. The exercise. The sleep. Meditation. Making and looking at art. Learning languages. Reading. Writing. Being in Nature. Even socialising. So today I was reading up about brain health on my library app at lunchtime. There was a study that they did that said educated people’s brains were better resistant to the stresses that lead to Alzheimer’s Disease. I kind of feel that the educated brain is better resistant to the blind stupidity of the world and how you have to suffer because of it.

I flicked through BBC IPlayer quickly to see what I am missing since I have stopped watching TV for the past two years. I am missing ‘Green Planet’ about the plants and I am also missing ‘Interior Design Challenge’. I like to see how people create their worlds in the buildings which make up our life. I like to see creative people being creative. I like to judge which is the most beautiful design. Design shapes our lives, our worlds, our interactions. It is an area worth knowing about, being aware about. The spaces we reside in make us what we are. The intention behind those spaces and the planning is important and you get to see it in that programme. I will try and make some time to watch it at some point. There is no rush.

I went on a walk with my friend and then to the pub afterwards after work. I managed to clock 32174 steps today. I meet up with this friend every week. We have a deep level of intimacy and know each other very well. It makes a change from the conversations with everyone else, where everyone has their walls up.

As we walked, I saw some flowers thrown across the road in front of the local police station. I wondered what the story was behind them? A lover’s quarrel? An accident? A gesture? The flowers were bruised and crushed. Poor flowers. Poor eye that had to see them spoilt. Poor world where the flowers are spoilt. Poor life that has such bruised flowers in it. Poor fate in which the flowers have to fade away.

A poem for practice:

the distance that she wanted I give her
the no that she said I make real
I measure it out
I build it
I shape my world according to her desire
I have nothing of what I want
I am not happy
and still she is not satisfied with me

The Body’s Treachery

30.01.2024

I am taking this whole evening off to relax and recover. Today, I became dizzy and almost fell over. If I had fallen over there, I would have hurt myself and caused a problem.

It is the shock. One conversation and perhaps nothing might have happened. It was the second one coming on top of the other one. It was the suddenness of it.

So now all the symptoms have come back with a vengeance. Everything except the cough.

I have been through disappointments. Everyone has. Before, it has always been okay. Do you think this weird fucked up stuff has happened to me that much before? It hasn’t. The problem is that now the coping mechanism has become messed up because it was three major ones in a row: Girl 1 – Girl 2 – Girl 1 again. And what Girl 2 did.

In terms of chronology Girl 1 is the third woman I have ever been genuinely, deeply and certainly in love with. The first love, when it ended, I didn’t get any symptoms as far as I can remember, although it took a very long time to recover from it psychologically. The second love caused a massive disruption to my life and health because my grandparents died while I was trying to cope with the disappointment. That took a very long time to come back from.

This third love is not as bad as the second love. Because no one has died. But it has been since last year that this story has been developing and not feeling good.

Last year, when I was rejected, there were no symptoms. I avoided her. I completely controlled myself around her. I tried to move on and escape from her hold over me. I was almost successful – I got 99% of the way there.

The hold is that I care about what she thinks about me. I have to stop caring. That’s the only way forward.

These symptoms have been recurring since September 2023 when the episode with Girl 2 happened. I thought I was finally getting better this month. I keep on thinking it is over and the symptoms aren’t going away.

I know that nobody can cure the symptoms. It is just going to take time like last time when the rejections coupled with the deaths fucked up the coping mechanism. My strategy this time was to move on straight away and not mope around like last time. The problem is that now I only know one candidate that is free. But even she doesn’t want what I want, so that is not an option. Online, there are only fraudsters that reply to potential matches (and one booty call – no further information on that one to be given here – because it is no one’s business whether I did or not). So, I am stuck. And that is the only cure.

You look at this body and how it is controlled by the unconscious. Rationally, I tell myself there are 3.5 billion women in the world. At least 0.2 billion would be ones that I am interested in. Rationally, I tell myself that everything is fine. It doesn’t matter that much. Other people have bigger problems in life. There are so many other people that make up your life. I’ve always been happy to be by myself. Some of them, I was actually relieved that it ended and I didn’t have to break it off myself. But because of what happened the last time with the second love and the deaths and how much it took to recover from, the body has gone into distress mode, unconscious fear of what’s going to happen. The body and the mind are traitors. You can’t control the unconscious, however much you try, the treachery of the body. I didn’t expect any of this to happen. I figured this wouldn’t happen again and I didn’t have to defend myself. But it has happened now.

All I’m hoping is that it is just today and everything will be okay tomorrow. That’s what you have to tell yourself every night.

And for all those reading and spending time with me – even my companions of the night – I think this might be my last diary post. I have never kept a diary this long before. I have never shared my diary with anyone. This was an experiment which has taken up a lot of time and effort. Initially, the diary was a letter. I took the idea from a film. I have tried to be as honest as possible. I thought the road to recovery was going to be short. It has not been. What else is there left to say? Everything is over.

A Phoenix Tells the Tale of Her Rebirth: A Patient’s Notes by Madeleine Channer

“A Patient’s Notes” is the soaring voice of the phoenix as it returns from fire and death to regain its former life, power and glory. Like the phoenix, its author burned in cancer and essentially died to give birth to this short, former nurse’s autobiography. The moments that flashed before the nearly departed’s life are here arranged and presented to form a story of healing, hope and enduring legacy. As the title suggests, the book is concerned with illness and its effects on life and its meanings, for all of us who are patients of this suffering world.

Continuing the theme of healing, the sales of this book written in the genre of the Christian medical memoir provide funds to the Diospi Suyana Hospital in Peru. The name of the hospital means to “Trust in God” in the Quechua language. It is because of this noble mission that I have decided to write this book review, rather than the fact that Madeleine Channer is perhaps one of my best and most intimate friends.

Madeleine has dedicated the book to her beloved father, Lesley Francis Cole, who did not manage to escape the tearing talons of cancer that she managed to evade. In terms of structure, the narrative is initiated by the primary scene of the original patient, the father with terminal cancer and his demise. From this tragic, traumatising moment, Madeline then shows how she builds a life dedicated to healing sickness. Finally, triumphantly, Madeleine’s own struggle with cancer is overcome with the help of those around her and the modern advances in medicine. A cruel contrast therefore motivates the work: the luckily present are compared to those unfortunates of history that did not live in the healing world of today. Those unfortunates who had to say goodbye to us for want of the proper care and knowledge. However, the contrast is also an inspiration: the war that Madeline has fought throughout her entire life against disease and cancer on behalf of patients like her father has resulted in victory.

What makes the book relevant to the historical moment and cultural trends is that Madeline had her recovery in lockdown, just as the world recovered from Covid and its effects. We share the relief and sense of wholeness from the broken years of the pandemic, the exulting sense of survival against the odds. Again, the celebration of the healing profession that the book espouses is a sentiment that has overwhelmed the world and England in particular, with its National Health Service. What adds something extra to this concoction is that the author is one of the upstanding citizens from the old generation, someone who has seen and lived through it all. So we hear things through the voice of those that have built the society and the community of care around us.

The constant theme of the book is adversity and its overcoming. Madeleine writes that hers was a precarious childhood where she was subject to emotional destabilisation and a corresponding lack of self esteem. The solution that the young Madeleine found to this state was the power of prayer, with its promise of change and renewal. She saw Christ as a model to aspire to, particularly as Christ the healer and the master of living. Several other heroes who were Christian saviours of the sick are also mentioned as inspirations: Florence Nightingale, Father Damien, Dr. Albert Schweitzer. The book is therefore a good example of what it means to have an enduring role model and how this can change the course of one’s life, as one tries to live up to the demands of becoming the figure that we idolise. The role model provides organisation and structure for living amidst the chaos of being and ultimately leads Madeleine to become a Christian saviour of those suffering in her own right, one of our most valuable members of society. Christ (and her father’s terminal illness) leads Madeleine to nurse Quechua Indian patients above 10,000 feet in the Andes.

Madeleine writes:

“How do we want to be remembered? What do we leave behind us? The kindness and diligent care provided by those involved in the great work of healing will echo for good, beyond time and into eternity”.

It is because Madeleine was one who nursed the sick and poor the we respect and love her all the more, and she will always be in our thoughts and memories. She has caught that good echo of healing with this well written, engaging and stimulating book, which moreover, brings in donations for the sick and poor of this world through its sales. Even if one is not in the faith community, the book is interesting in itself as it sheds light on the trials of one that sought to do good in the world despite all the set backs that life can throw at us. I was very happy to read and review o the book, and not just because Madeleine is my very good, very supportive, very perfect friend. Rather, it is because the book is the voice of the phoenix that has been brought back to her full beauty, after joining in that restless, oceanic sleep which haunts our being and time.