Walking Begins
As has been stated in “Chapter 1”, my initial motivation had been weight loss.
I’d become not just miserable, but fat and miserable, which I had deemed unacceptable.
You could be a miserably suicidal, alcoholic mess…but you’d at least look the part doing it.
I at least wanted to look how I felt, in an active state of decay.
I wanted needed to look in the mirror and see the person I was used to, the person I felt.
A stark shadow of a man, comprised entirely of ribs and collar bones, a sliver of pale flesh stretched menacingly over a pile of jarring bones.
Merely a couple of missed meals away from the endless night.
But I’d never really been to a gym before, I wouldn’t even know how to go about it, let alone be able to afford it, and on top of that I was sure my social anxiety wouldn’t allow it regardless.
So really, as I saw it, I had one option.
I would go for a walk.
Every day.
Outside.
So I put on my black boots and my black skinny jeans, and out into the world I went.
My first walk, I did 700m.
and I was proud.
But I couldn’t just walk around the block in silence like that, I hated silence, it let the screaming in….I’d felt rushed to get home, to get inside, to get safe, to hide from the noise in my head with the noise of anything else…..
So, I went to the store and bought some headphones.
And the next walk, I was able to go further…I managed 1km.
Right!
I’d learned that I could listen to podcasts or music while I walked….and it would take some of the urgency out of walking in silence, allowing me to walk further.
I felt like a caveman discovering fire.
So again, for the next few days I walked, and eventually I’d made it 1.5…then 2 whole kilometres.
and again, another new experience….for the first time in decades….I’d become sunburned.
Having been largely nocturnal for most of my life, and even then essentially a recluse, exposure to the sun had been minimal, if not largely non-existent.
My Doctor often urged me to spend ‘just 5 minutes’ in the sun, waving bloodtest results and my worrying vitamin D deficiency at me whilst patiently and gently chastising me.
I was so pale, that in the light of a full moon, I glowed, iridescent, like some kind of hideous deep sea fish under a spotlight.
So I dug feverishly through my crowded wardrobe, and eventually came across an old cap, purchased at a service station 15 years prior.
So hat and headphones equipped, out I went.
And 2 km became 2.5km.
I began incorporating the local pub into my walk, so that I could stop and have a drink of water…but it didn’t quite fit in with the route I was trying to develop, I was for some reason embarrassed to be seen out walking, sweating and puffing and panting….and the temptation to just stop for the day and start drinking was…overwhelming….
But….I thought, I’d occasionally seen other people milling about on the streets when I was walking…and they often had water bottles….
Aha!
I could take some water with me.
So off to the store I went again, and I purchased myself a water bottle.
One with a little handle I could easily hold in 2 fingers, and a little cap I could close over the mouthpiece, so as not to aggravate my Obsessive Compulsive Disorder’s ‘Contamination’ fears.
What a game changer, I thought, being able to sip water while I was walking…
How luxurious!
It seemingly made a huge difference as well, coupled with the headphones and my cap it had once again taken some more urgency from and brought more comfort to, my walks.
They were no longer a race to find noise, or hydration, or shade…they were becoming sustainable, they were becoming an outing.
But I’d begun to get blisters, and I was so hot in my denim jeans, and sweating so much it was interminable….at one point so offensive as to be unnatural.
“This can’t be right” I’d thought, “I must have unknowingly pissed myself?…can that happen?”
So I needed an outfit, something suitable, some kind of…walking clothes.
So off to the store I went, yet again…and I bought some shorts, and some singlets and some shoes I could walk in.
Getting dressed in my new outfit for the first time, I felt, to be frank, like a bit of a dick.
Like an imposter.
Like a kid playing at “Man who goes for walks”
Like an alien desperately failing to blend in….
Like I had an unconvincing sign over my head to deceive people….
“I am a very real and normal person” it read, in bright neon letters, convincing no one.
But, as I kept saying to myself on my walks, the hateful mantra I kept shouting at myself internally to spur me forward…
“I. Will. Be. Thin.“
As I stood in the mirror looking at myself in my stupid little shorts, my goofy new sneakers, my tattered old hat with my silly little water bottle, I felt incredibly out of place, unfamiliar, embarrassed at the very sight of me.
And I felt like everyone who would see me outside would think just that…
“look at this idiot”
“what a fuckin’ nerd”
“oh who does he think he’s kidding?”
but I also saw something else in the mirror.
I saw a fat man.
“Would you rather look like a bit of a dick for an hour a day, or be fat forever?” I asked myself.
“I. Will. Be. Thin.” echoed my endless self-loathing.
And so, before I left, I added one more item to my outfit.
A pair of sunglasses.
At least this way, I reasoned, I could hide the shame in my eyes from anyone who saw me.
And so back out I went.
even hiding under my hat, and behind my sunglasses, I felt naked.
I felt vulnerable.
I felt exposed….
But to hell with them!
“I Will Be Thin” whispered my inner demons.