Saturday, the mania high water mark finally came. I had been
planning to wait until Monday to see if I had erased the visa stress eating four
kilograms, the weight for which I blamed the Home Office and every
unsympathetic person I have met over the last five years who didn’t know what their country had put my little family through. Four kilograms was
nothing, not even real weight, but if we don’t have metrics, we don’t have
anything. My plan to wait until Monday made sense on paper, but then it didn’t
and when I got up at 2AM on Saturday, I was too tempted. I stripped down naked
to climb on the scale and stop it all. And there is was, the Japanese algorithm
from this scale we’ve dragged with us from country to country, telling me that
I was thirty-four years old, in terms of the metrics. This doesn’t feel
good, I thought, looking down at the number. It doesn’t feel like anything. I
got dressed again and put the scale back and went up again to bed for another
couple of hours. There it is, I guess. I guess now I can go back to being
normal.
Father’s Day I got up to run, but was immediately distracted — made coffee and
meditated and procrastinated. I looked online at things and scrolled endlessly
until I finally realised I needed to go now, right now, or it wouldn’t happen. It had not been raining and I felt good, as good as I have anyway. My
body being light and aged only thirty four years, in terms of the metrics, I
put on the 180 beats per minute running track list and went to a little loop up
by the hospital where you can run one kilometre, going down an incline and then
up a hill. Around and around, my Garmin GPS watch buzzing off the pace on each
kilometre. I went eight and then nine and then ten and thought, I should do a
half marathon one of these days, now that I am thin again and eleven buzzed and
then twelve and then thirteen and I kept going.
Mei and Yoko were waiting for me at the door with a handmade
card, and I was drenched with sweat. The card opened with a little cut-out for
me, with my beard and glasses, but smiling. Mei had written ‘Vegan’ in the
corner with a slab of meat crossed out, and I thought, yes, this is what I am
now, this is what everything is revolving around. I showered and Naomi
and I walked to church together. We sang some hymns I didn't know, but it didn't matter and I felt ill about halfway through the service
and realised my body was weaker from the run than I thought even though it only
was thirty four. The service ended and we had tea then the girls and I and Yoko went to town to have coffee and celebrate.
In ten days, I will be thirty seven, but that doesn’t matter
because your age is just a number. Your weight is also just a number.
Everything, it turns out, is just a number. I woke up at four AM and it was
just a number. I showered and put on my sport coat to go to London for the day.
The sun had come up and the rain had stopped again.