The Perception Flicker

Unff. Couple of days blogless. Couple of days exerciseless too. Couple of days including big pizzas, greasy spoon lunches, fairly large cereal breakfasts.

And fear, of course. Fear of rocketing numbers, the exhaustion of having to go a fuck of a long way back to healthy. Fear of having more time behind me than ahead. Fear of books not written, things not done, and a life cut horribly short by my own hand - putting food in my mouth that's the equivalent of pouring acid in my eyes, slashing holes in my liver, cutting off my own feet, and ultimately shooting myself in the head. Diabetic fear, in other words.

Finally got back off my ass again tonight, walked five miles, nearly 12,000 steps. Done now. Feel every one of the 12,000. Tonight though, a form of fear to which I'm not normally prone. Went walking down the Trail, but to get there from our flat, you have to go past a couple of areas where people congregate - a skate park, a cinema, a handful of cheap restaurants and a leisure centre. Tonight, in the evening sunshine, the pathway to the Trail was thronged with people, and - I froze.
I have the distinction of both having a brother and yet being raised as an only child. As an only child, I've always had a 'fuck you' attitude to peer pressure. I walk where I want, I do what I want, and if the world doesn't like it, it can go right to hell.

But tonight, I froze. Suddenly very much aware of my body and the numbers of people through whom I had to walk.

That was a new and unwelcome sense of fear. Naturally of course, I shook myself down, turned up some Guns N Roses in my ears and marched on through the buggers, because of course I refuse to be bullied by my own imagination. But still - that was odd. Walked on my way, but it was just a little moment of weirdness in the day. Occurred to me with my involvement in the Women's Equality Party that to some extent, you can make a comparison between that tiny twinge and the much more pervasive, permanent sensation of what it's like to be a woman in the world - that potential fear of eyes, of judgement in which the world is actively schooled. I'm not about to make too big a thing of that, because I know plenty of women who don't feel that way, any more than I ever have done. Still - a weird moment of self-consciousness in an otherwise self-congratulatory day.