Town, the city centre, feels like the beginning of something, like whatever is going to happen now has started, but hasn't really started yet. I had to give blood and was early, so I walked into the station, to see what was open, what was left. John Lewis is closed now, but the American sweet shop wasn't, and I went in looking for graham crackers for the kids, because we are going camping in a few weeks, and the whole point of camping is eating s'mores. The restaurants were open, with the signs about social distancing and masks and hand sanitiser and I walked up to the blood donation centre wondering what this would be like in a year or two years. What would be left.
My heart rate is a constant concern for the blood donation attendants. A heart rate needs to be more than fifty beats per minute for me to donate, but every other time or so that I go, the nurse takes my wrist, and counts while watching the clock and then looks at me concerned. She'll need to get someone else to check and the person who comes into check sees me and knows me: oh it's you, and I give my story again about running a lot and this and that and she takes my wrist to check again. I can get my heart rate up if I think about something terrifying, so this time I imagined running from that explosion in Beruit, like I was there and the cloud of smoke was coming to consume me. I tried to breathe hard and tap my feet, and after a minute the nurse looked at me and said, fifty-two. Just barely then. I can go back to my normal anxiety.
I'm on leave this week, which means I'm not supposed to be working, but there is no way to avoid it. The emails still come in even if I shut off the notifications and my book proofs need to be gone through and I have marking to do at the part-time jobs I keep up. There's a low grade of worry that also seems to be persistent. It used to be about my visa, but now it seems to be replaced by my taxes, which I've never worried about before. Some institutional work that I have to do that I don't feel confident about and how I fear making a mistake — apparently I have that space in my head like a cavity for a tumour to grow and even if I remove one, another one will replace it.
After the lockdown started in March and I finished my lonely marathon and was still eating like I was running thirty miles a week even though I wasn't, I gained some weight and felt heavy, like the world and my family and marriage were all being dragged down. The one thing I could control, my eating, I controlled for 82 days, a rational number I thought for losing 100 grams a day and getting back to my goal weight. I obsessed, of course, and magically, after 82 days, was exactly where I wanted to be: I had made weight. I stepped off the scale, like I have again and again over my lifetime, fifteen years now, and thought, well, there we go.
Now what. I get up early and go for a walk. I keep counting calories until I don't want to anymore. Yesterday, for example, I said I didn't want to play the calorie counting game. That seemed to be enough, but also it was the beginning of a stage that will inevitably include gaining weight. Another round of self-talk about feeling or not feeling full. Will I be doing this at fifty, I wondered. Sixty-five, when I retire, if I make it that far. It's a ridiculous way to think, of course. I can remove the app from my home screen. Take a break. Try not to think about it. It'll come around, don't worry.