ABOUT THE POEM: “Abnormally Mature Performance Disorder” is a searing account of personal betrayal, extreme solitude, and physical self-mastery. The author recounts building a successful business from nothing, only to have his character exploited and resources consumed by family. Stripped bare and sent to rehab, he forged a private kingdom of the body and mind through rigorous discipline (e.g., 3,000 squats on 400 calories a day). The piece is a declaration of pure, unyielding character against a parasitic world that cannot comprehend strength built without external investment or approval.At thirty, my bank balance rivaled that of overseas engineering graduates-yet I hadn’t spent a single rupee to start or run my business. I built it from home through relentless work, without a degree, without guidance, and without stepping outside for seven straight years. I pushed through thirty-six-hour stretches, collapsed for eight, and repeated the cycle. My family devoured every rupee. They would have done the same even if I’d held the degree they worshipped. To them, I was nothing more than a racehorse they had wagered on.
At twenty-three they had already written me off-declared me dead, not for failing as a human being but for failing to be profitable. In the following seven years I earned their counterfeit respect, and it vanished the moment my earnings slowed. Whatever capital I needed to grow, they consumed as if entitled to it. Then my mother died.
For fifteen years-from the day my sister eloped to the day my father had his heart attack-I stood by them without expectation. Even so, I was abandoned to ruin. No one asked how I was, and no one tried to mend what they had broken.
Then came the darker days. A whore with her finger in her nose and a dick in her ass-lost in her own chaos-tried to preach philosophy to me while my world collapsed. The bodybuilder I once was withered under alcohol until I landed in rehab.
At home, the Surpanakhas and Vibhishanas of my extended family lectured my father about their lofty moral standards, staging their righteousness while I drowned in silence.
Since I could not control anyone, I claimed the only kingdom left to me: my body and my mind.
In rehab I survived on four hundred grams of food a day-oats, flour, plain carbohydrates-for 758 days. Hitting three thousand squats in that hush was no small victory. I completed fifteen hundred knuckle push-ups in sessions ranging from fifteen minutes to two hours, with full range of motion, weighing barely fifty-four kilograms. The struggle kept me alive. The athlete forged the philosopher; the philosopher gave the athlete purpose. That loop became my engine. These words were written in that place.
I don’t ask, beg, or steal. No one gives me anything, and I have never had much. That is how I lived my life, and that is how I lived in rehab.
I do not read other philosophers. I want my thoughts to remain mine. There are enough questions pressing against the walls of my mind. Now I am outside, free from that filth, searching only for ignition. I have no desire to rejoin the world or the noise. I want silence.
A private engine of transformation churns inside me, running on high-octane despair. I keep feeding it. The vessel no longer matters. The soul burned away long ago-only gears remain, grinding to stay alive.
No pet. No wife. No children. No mother. No sister. No friend. No lover. No god. No father.
Only me-Ronie Dinosaur-speaking to the wall.
And the wall, as always, stays silent.
Even when my focus drifted, I still earned twenty percent of my original income-equal to an engineer’s salary. The day they sent me to rehab, everything I had built was stripped away. All momentum died. I lost years, income, muscle, relationships, and the last threads of trust.
The world cannot understand how someone can build a life without investment, perform three thousand squats in rehab at forty, and still walk out standing. It is beyond them to grasp that this is called character-a virtue they do not practice, a quality they only build temples for. These are the same people who drape snakes around their necks to mimic Shiva, never realizing they are simply performers posing as divine.
I call it abnormally-mature-performance disorder. I am not worldly-wise, and I am still not “smart.” I have simply realized my character-and the world remains ready to exploit it if I allow it.
The total sum of this life is loneliness. Afraid of becoming weak, I no longer listen to songs. Music would drag old memories back into me, and I have no room left for ghosts.
