001:
There is nothing significant about today and there is nothing significant about you either, but when you wake up, there is a feeling you cannot shift.
A gnawing at your stomach, a scratching at your throat. Like a wild animal is trapped inside of you and is suffocating in its desperation to be free.
You put it down to the hangover, you were out last night, as you are every night. Perhaps it's taking its toll on you. Yet you don't feel terribly hungover, instead you feel horribly aware of your own body. Every itch, every beat, every fibre of you is convulsing with life. You are suddenly aware of your own bones. It's not unpleasant, but it's not pleasant either.
You decide, unusually for you, that now is the time to walk it off. You're up early for a change, the wild animal making it impossible to sleep. Take a shower, brush your teeth, dry your hair, moisturise your body, choose clothes and jewellery and make-up. Your hungover brain can deal with mundane and methodical. Go.
You meet your mother for breakfast as Glasgow's newest brunch place. It has some great reviews. Everyone is surprised you managed to get a reservation. You meet her once a week, and always for brunch. She lives nearby, in a village accessible only by car, and lives a busy life. Your shared passion is eating good food and drinking good wine.
Today, though is different. The animal is asleep in your stomach and you don't wish to wake it up, and when you look at the food you see something else. All those colours, twisting around like that. It's not a salad, it's a mosaic. It doesn't look appetising. Refusing to eat the salad has two effects: one, it upsets your mother, who paid for it, and two, it makes you feel defiant. It's desperate to be eaten and you're not letting it gets its way. You're in control. You're the boss. The salad wilts away before your very eyes, gradually at first but then at the end it looks disgusting and untouchable. Your mother is concerned and is talking about the long-term effects of your party lifestyle and how you've never refused food before but you feel far, far away, watching the scene through an old television. You are making internal comments, as if discussing the show with your friend – "of course I never refuse food. Food soaks up the booze. Look at me, I'm all food and booze. That's what I'm made of." The animal snores within you and the show your mother appears on witters on, set on a different planet from you, practically static. You're not watching the show anymore.
You are wide awake with the realisation that change is coming.
007:
You haven't slept in a while and you can't stop thinking about the brunch. What you thought to yourself, about yourself. Did you mean it? You thought you were a fat, drunken failure, the kind of person who drinks and eats to forget they are left behind. You were harsh. Did you mean it?
Yes, you did. The animal must have pulled something out, some hidden anger stowed in your lungs. You had ignored your body and it had learned to hate you. Now that you feel everything, you are aware of your own weight, your own skin, your own hair, your own muscles, your own slowed concentration.
You haven't gone to work or spoken to your friends. You've started running because nothing else accelerates the heart rate. Everything else feels flat, but running is when you come to life. Only when you run does the wild animal stop screaming. In the morning fog, the coldness of the air at your ankles, hitting the cement with the full weight of your body – what do you think you'll do, crack it? Maybe. You keep trying, anyway. You keep running.
The sleeping doesn't matter much, but you haven't eaten either. Yet you've never had so much energy. You let your phone run out of battery and you just ignore it now. No photos, no calls, no messages. You are reading books, drinking water, organising the flat. You used to live in squalor but not now. The place looks great. You used to hoard all that weird furniture, all that free crap from gumtree? Thinking a dresser would change your life. You've sold it all this week, and last night you roamed the sparse flat all night, admiring its clean edges and empty spaces. There's no pictures on the walls, no piles on the floor, no dust in the corners. You'd taken the money earned and spent it on a large, plain, white-framed mirror, and an exercise bike. You also bought some digital scales. You stood before the mirror naked, on the scales (160 lbs) and made a list of everything that needed to be changed. It was a long list, but it didn't make you feel defeated or despairing.
