The King of Thailand

The belief that one possesses psychic powers is a remarkably common delusion.  Only at its further reaches does it attract attention.  (Most everyone is fairly sure they know what their mother, lover and dog are thinking.)  I know one strenuously spiritual lady who prophesies the collapse of the global banking system.  Within two weeks.  November at the latest.  The banks persist; she goes on being wrong without noticing.  Some day, I assume, the banks will finally fail.  And even when we’re all broke, she’ll be pleased to be found infallible.

This morning I woke up entirely certain that Bhumibol Adulyadej, the King of Thailand, had died.  I had that precise pain which could only mean the king was dead.  The taxi drivers all say the war will start the day the king dies.  I checked, he hadn’t died, no doubt he will die soon.

For years I loved a man: you know how it goes, the more I loved him, the less he loved me.  Anyway, the uses he desired for me were not those which I desired.  He still wished to tell me, endlessly, how terrible it was to be a telephone service representative.  For a games company, the kind people gamble on and go crazy.  Basically it was an electronic sweatshop.  Took advantage of refugees from the European electronic collapse.  

From him I learned that nowadays, if people wish to communicate, they send a text.  Actual phone calls are only for abuse.  Basically the company had a rule that if he wasn’t chewed out at least 30 times a day he went on probation, was ineligible for promotions and bonuses.

None of this was pleasant to hear, but it was all real, and I was willing to hear it, if only he loved me a little.  He couldn’t tell me he loved me a little.  He could only say it was very hard job.  I grew resentful.  I dared him to say a kind word.  He looked at me like I’d asked him to violate his religion.   

Finally I stopped writing to him.  Since he didn’t love me.  He didn’t write back.  He didn’t do what he was supposed to do and discover he loved me when I was gone.  As for me, I still love him, every day, but just a little, the way some people go on smoking just 1 or 2 cigarettes every day for years.  Honestly, he wouldn’t have needed to love me much.  I would have flown to him if he had said I could make him even 10% happier.  Which really isn’t very happy at all.  But he never said anything like that.  

When I think of the man that I love, I know he is suffering deeply.  Not because of me.  I was not particularly significant, but for other reasons.  I do not want him to be unhappy.  I want him to be happy, even if it means he hardly ever thinks of me and, when he does, I am only evidence of his humble origins, of how very far he’s come.

But he is not happy.  He is anxious and depressed -- to a degree which may even be dangerous.  Also he’s ill.  Not direly, but in a miserable and persistent way.  I am certain of this, of his feeling, and of my ability to know what he feels, even though he is thousands of miles away and we have ceased to write or to speak.  

I believe that I have psychic powers.  This is a remarkably common delusion, which calls attention to itself only in extremes.  I know what he feels, even though he does not write to me, does not speak to me, does not love me, does not seek my help, does not want me back.  I believe I have psychic powers.  (No rule says powers have to be useful.)  I am delusional.  I am entirely delusional.  But I am delusional and I AM RIGHT.