When you're asked to think back, to remember something specific, all the mundane details of life, of fifteen years, are essentially gone. There are some stories I've told over and over again through the years that have highlights and laugh lines — these stories gloss over the things I actually said, but don't remember saying. The cutting things, the blunt things, about wanting or not wanting to have kids. About whatever my expectations were when I went to Japan, or came to Britain, or married. I'm thirty-seven now, so I imagine that I saw the world the way that I see it as a thirty-seven year old, but of course, I did not, did I. I saw it how I did when I was that age — it was neither right nor wrong.
It was raining and windy yesterday, but I went out running anyway. The marathon training schedule said I needed to run 17 miles and I mapped a run longer than that to be able to mark the distance the same forward and back. When I left, it was not bad, but I came up to Greenfield Road and a tree had fallen and there were men cutting it apart and clearing the road. I ran down to the High Street and back up on to my route, keeping a decent pace for the first six miles and then slowly my legs began to give out, little by little until I got to the turn-around point and thought, there's no way I can make it back like this.
As a rule, when you're running and tired, you need to engage in positive self-talk, saying this and that about the nature of pain and accepting that things will get better if you press on. They will, of course, get better, you can make it through almost anything, but I hadn't prepared for this run — I hadn't eaten properly or brought water and I thought, as I came to mile fifteen, realising that I had got too far out and it would be more like nineteen miles in the end, of course it's going to be okay, but what if it's not. What if it isn't and I collapse here on the side of this canal. I haven't seen another runner in thirty minutes, but surely someone would see me.
Of course, it was fine. The road was still closed at Greenfield Road and I got home, inside of the house with the girls watching whatever it was that they were watching and I realised my hands were seizing up and I drank all the water I could, pouring sugar in it, and Yoko asking if I was okay. Of course, I was okay, but I couldn't answer. I sat down on the toilet seat and told myself I was okay, that I had made a dumb mistake. It was just a dumb mistake, wasn't it. I made my way to church and sat in the front row alone while the processional came in and I thumbed through to the first hymn, and then I wasn't okay. We sat and stood once or twice and it was getting worse and when we stood again for everyone to recite the creed, I slipped out the side of the pew, said I was sorry to the sidesperson and went to the bathroom to throw up.
You should, when asked, be able to recall a specific happy moment from some period of your life, but I find it hard to come up with something, particularly when the parameters are narrowed. Recall a happy moment from that February in Niigata. I can, I'm sure that I can, but the inability to answer quickly is unsettling. I remember an awkward conversation I had in my little blue Nissan Alto. I remember it always being windy. You can make a narrative out of the absence of a specific answer. You do it when you've given up, when you don't want to have to do something anymore. You say to yourself, I can't remember because I never have been happy. You know that isn't true. Of course, it isn't true. You were happy. You just can't remember anymore.