It pains, gosh does it pain. Every time when you go through it, and boy have I gone through my fair share of ‘em—it hurts. I think I may be a magnate for these things. And you know what—every time I start to recover from them, I wind up making the same god-damn mistake again. (Hey, maybe this time it’ll be different, I end up saying to myself; maybe I’ll find that special someone who I’m supposed to be with, and maybe I won’t feel so alone anymore. I can make my own contribution to whatever she wants, but then why would anyone want a damaged soul like mine, so maybe that’s the problem; these women don’t want me in their lives right now, or maybe ever. But I’ve always had that Hollywood-ised vision of romance implanted in my brain that I can’t seem to get rid of. My sisters are too sensible for all this bullshit, nor do they have the time, but me—yeah—it’s not like I have everything else in my life spectacular right now, but I just figure if I can get this part of it to work—maybe it’ll be easier for everything else to fall back into place. So I’m still trying, unsuccessfully, I might add…My mother must be reading this by now, I’d given her a link to the blog and asked her to go through it and tell me what she thought (I always end up doing that by the way, dragging my mother into everything that I do; it’s like this connection we have, ever since I was a kid—my mom would somehow be able to read my mind, my thoughts—and she still does somehow)… even if it’s all the way from Baltimore.
My sleeping pattern’s slowly coming back since yesterday, sleeping a healthier 5 to 6 hours now, but the down side is I’m not feeling hungry these days. Just had a bit to eat for both iftari and sahari, but today I just didn’t feel like having anything at all in the morning, so dad made sure I drank some roohafza at least. It was nice, and sweet. And then I just opened my fast in the evening with a glass of water and a couple of dates. Said all my prayers as usual and then winded up ending the day with my bottle of pepsi.
It was pretty bad until a couple of months ago. No, more—even years before that—when I first started living in the gulf and the market had been flooded with all kinds of soft drinks. So, what started off with pepsi, went onto coke, and then 7 up and every other type of drink you could get there, and soon I was hooked. So much so that, even after my accident, when I hadn’t been able to walk properly—I would still make the 2 minute trek to the bakery around the corner and have my fill of the liquid. I guess I was like my dad in that sense—addicted to his cigs.
But they’ve gone down now, consistently. It started with me bringing it down to 600 ml, and then 500 ml, and just as I was getting used to the 300 ml ones (these were cokes) pepsi came in with their 1 litre maha packs, and they were just too tempting to resist (a little cheaper on the price, and a little more bang for your buck). But ever since ramdan’s started and I couldn’t have anything to eat or drink—even that intake’s gone down considerably. I’m 67 now by the way. I was 75 when my mom was about to leave, and I’d been staying pretty much 75 even before that.
But now, I’ve started to come down closer to where I’d wanted to be. Mom said she didn’t want to see me going below 70, but I told her I’d try to reach 65 if I could. And you know what, now I’m thinking why don’t I go for the 60 mark and see what happens… if I can even decrease it to that much (the stomach’s looking pretty good—all lean and slender, and I just love the chest and the fact that I don’t have a paunch anymore.).
Which brings me to what I’d been doing for the whole day. Not that much really—woke up by 6 (had a long 3 hour sleep thank god) and then did a bit of work on the computer, and was still feeling just a bit more sleepy so I told my dad that I’d go and change and take a nap on the couch and would he wake me up by 11? It was 9, so he said sure. By the time I opened my eyes and saw my dad sitting there in front of me, I asked him what the time was, and he said 12:30. Shit, it was almost time for him to go for his afternoon prayers, so I told him we’d go after he’d come back from them in another hour. But guess what, it had really started to come down by then—my dad had just closed the front door and was surprised at how dark the sky had suddenly become—when it let loose and a massive torrent of rain just erupted. It must’ve stayed that way for an hour or two at least, and even after that—it was drizzling, quite steadily. So by 5 we decided to make a move for the medical shop. We parked the car in a lane right next to it, got out, bought all the medicine, and then as we were leaving my dad told me about the times when he used to have to travel in this weather—coming back to the house, from his shop, on the scooter—getting completely drenched sometimes, and once even being carried away by a nala, which had turned into a small, raging river that had sprung up close to the house, but luckily there were a few youth right there who saw him and jumped in after him and rescued him.
