TW // Obsession, self-harm
i)
Running cleanses the soul. It is a release of endorphins; an appreciation that one exists and that just a thundering trail of feet and swinging limbs is enough to feel alive. The juddering of blood in wrist and neck and the sheen of crystalline sweat on brow are an emphatic assertion of life.
ii)
“It’s perfect.” Juliette lied, as she peeled open the gift that lay on her lap. It was Christmas Day and the family had formed a ragged, smothering circle of smiles and threadbare, colourful knitwear. Glasses of premature wine caught a sharp angle of sunlight, only exacerbated by the white snow that framed each and every uncovered window. She turned the watch over in her hands, studying its crevices and tightly bound form. It did a million and one things that she would ignore. It would be slung on her wrist and forgotten, offering nothing but a symbol of a lavish lifestyle that was not her own. I didn’t buy it, my boyfriend did. It was a present. She could hear herself saying the words to placate any judgement to fiscal arrogance.
“You can wear it running. It tracks you.” Luke said through a knowing smile. He could tell by the force of her own that she was floundering for a reason to be thankful; to understand why he would buy her such a needless and extravagant gift. But here was the reason. Here was the thought that had gone into the present, after all.
“Tracks me?” She narrowed her eyes, unsure but suddenly showing interest in the gift.
“GPS. Running time. And heart rate. So you can try and improve each time.” The smile on his face was one of victory as he saw her eyebrows rise in interest. She was a technophobe and had little to no time with the advancing world. She had a basic phone, and a basic laptop, but other to that it was the outdoors or a good book that captivated the majority of her time. But this was different, it was something that teased at her competitive nature; her desire to challenge and to better herself. It was perfect. She kissed the still-smiling Luke and blushed as his mother cooed pathetically, drunkenly from across the room.
iii)
The watch was perfect. Each run was a new challenge, a new focus for her to place in front of the ever-chaotic world and hone all of her energy to win. It was a challenge against nothing other than a previous version of herself, a worse version, a lesser version. Once home from work, she would greet Luke with a peck on the cheek, bound the stairs and get changed into her running gear. The watch would be placed on her wrist; fully charged and primed, and she would exit the house in a burst of excitement. I must do better. I must improve on yesterday’s time. The distance was fixed and not excessive: 5.3 miles. It was a circuit of a lake from which Juliette’s house was a short walk. Each iteration had to be faster, whether it be by a second or by ten, she had to shave some time off each attempt.
For months she improved. She took her time from sixty-six minutes, to fifty-nine, then to fifty-five, within only a few months. Then the reductions become more piecemeal. Fifty-five crept down to fifty-four. Then fifty-four became fifty-three-and-a-half. And then she rolled her ankle.
iv)
It was a bad sprain. Juliette had pushed herself too hard and taken her focus away from the fundamentals of where to place her feet. An exposed root jutted in the near-dark of an early autumn evening, barely illuminated by her blinking head-torch. Her big toe landed on the bulk of the root’s mass and her foot turned outward. There was a crunch as her calf jabbed at the ground and then she toppled onto her right hip. She roared. Not through pain, or disappointment, but through anger. Anger at the root, anger at her useless head-torch, anger at the setting sun, and anger at herself for failing to improve on her time. She had let herself down.
v)
Christmas returned along with the family and the smiles and the rhetorical questions: “how’s work?”, “what’s new with you?”, “have you married yet?” Musty jumpers with red-wine stains melded into the grinning circle as presents were opened and discarded back into the mass of torn paper and crunching plastic.
“Oh my.” Juliette unclenched her teeth just enough to free the words. The present in her lap sat like a beacon of mockery. Luke smiled and his dark eyes gathered into a roll of creases. He had been working around the clock for months, barely coming home, sometimes staying away. His company was going through a merger and it was all he could think about. He would sit and stare out of the window, lost in thought, or wake sweating and panting from a façade of sleep. “I know you need your ankle to heal, but it is great. I promise.” It was half a pair of spectacles, a single sheet of glass attached to a single loop of plastic.
“What is it?” Juliette could feel her cheeks aching from the performance of a smile that covered her face. I hope I look like I care. She had not run in months; one-hundred-and-eight days to be exact. One-hundred-and-eight days of aching misery in which all she wanted to do was dart outside and be gone with the wind and rough air soothing her lungs. Her eyes drifted from the rain-soaked window to the wrapped and supported leg that was propped on a stool before her; a monument to her failure that required constant attention.
“It goes with the watch. For running. You can create a ghost lap.”
“A ghost lap?” Her voice rose with a harmonic of distaste that she tried to smile away, not failing to notice Luke’s smile hesitate with disappointment.
“You see your previous self running and can follow, and try to beat it.” He was like a wounded animal. So much thought had gone into the present, he might have even bought it before the injury, she thought, but it was a pathetic misjudgement. Despite the use it may have, she couldn't run now. The infection had rendered her ankle bloated and impotent, delaying her return to the lake. Why can’t you be more considerate, Luke? Less thoughtless? She said nothing but forced another smile. A look of guilt ran across Luke’s face which made her slightly less miserable.
vi)
“You can do this, Jules. You can do this.” The words of her physiotherapist were etched into her consciousness. It had become a mantra. Whether it be getting out of bed in the morning or tying a shoelace, or walking to the fridge; each ripple of pain that coursed up her steadily healing leg was a reverberation of the encouraging words she had heard so many times before. She stepped gingerly out into the soft warmth of a summer evening and drew in a deep breath. Her heart was thumping in her chest, eager to get going, eager to get back out into the wild with the air glancing off her hot, gasping breath. But also fearful. The scar on her leg, where they had cut out the infection, throbbed with the memory of lying in bed. Her body was soft with the extended rest, and had grown over an under-exerted heart and lungs. She dreaded what would come. The inevitable pain; the barriers that she had to push through in order to become a semblance of the person she had once been, to succeed at what she loved. The world had grown noisy and brash around her, like a scar of light and sound that she longed to peel away. She drew in another, decisive breath, and started to run again.
vii)
FOLLOW A BETTER VERSION OF YOURSELF.
A gormless, smiling man flexed beneath the printed imperative on the front of the box. Juliette had largely forgotten about the Christmas present from Luke, much as he had seemingly forgotten about her: working nights on end. When will the merger go through? When will I get my boyfriend back. She peeled open the lid of the box and withdrew the contents. Just as she had half-remembered from what she had labelled as her “dark days”, it was a single spectacle, with a wrap-around plastic that was intended to hold it in place in front of her eye. She ran her fingers along the length of the rubbery appendage and allowed it to flex around the right side of her face. It propped itself lightly against the side of her nose and clung to the back of her ear. A sliver of glass hung in front of her eye, empty and almost entirely invisible.
Calibration involved her standing naked in front of the mirror as the lens scanned each nuance of her body. She eyed and prodded at the edges of her form, longing to return to how she was, aware that she had returned to a size at which her mother might raise a judging eyebrow (her mind fingered at the edges of a source for her perfectionism and self-critique, but she pushed the thoughts away). Her ankle was still bloated and misshapen, a reminder of her fallibility, her past failings.
Her watch lit up with the words “Eye-Lens 2.3.1 calibrated. Click to activate.” She obliged. In half a second, everything lit up before her. The world took on an orange hue, as though the sun were setting brightly behind her back. Despite it covering only one eye the brightness seemed to bleed across her entire vision, making everything seem all at once beautiful and kissed by fire. She looked at her palm and it sang with heat. This is beautiful, she thought. Perfect.
viii)
It had a seamless introduction into her life. The simplicity of seeing a version of yourself and understanding its distance in relation to you. It was how she saw the world: there exists x and you are y; make y better than x. Repeat. It was the mantra that social media - and some unrefined parenting - had drummed into her and everyone else her age. Comparison and competition was the new measure of friendship. She ran once more alone: a steady, pace-setting jog; something that was beatable but not too easy; she did not want to make a mockery of the challenge. The next run was a joy. She engaged the Eye-Lens and set off, seeing the previous iteration of herself a few steps ahead. Clad in nondescript, silvery running gear, she could make out her shape, her form, her slightly pronounced raising of her right foot; a memory of the injury that she was aware had never left her. It is me. A worse me. She pursued, jaw slack with wonder at the sight of herself, before cruising past and leaving her old self for dust.
The lens switched to a rear-view and a sliver of a window appeared at the top of her right eye’s sight. She could see herself, jaw set and face sweaty, in a too-slow pursuit of her actual person. Juliette smiled and increased her pace as her pathetic ghost lap faded from view.
ix)
The ghosts became faster. With each run that she improved, the ghost for next time would improve. It was a perfect simulation of progress. Sometimes the end of her run would be a photo finish, her head bent as she loped onto the driveway, just to beat the ghost who was a hair’s breadth behind her. Her heart would beat and beat and beat and all air seemed to hide away from her gaping lungs. This is perfect.
It became an obsession. Something on which she could not allow herself to lose focus. If the ghost beat her then she would lose sleep, and try twice as hard the following day until she could record a better time. Minutes seemed to tumble away from the lap time. Weight tumbled away from her body as food became an unwanted burden; simply fuel. The lake became an insignificance. It was all about the running, the improving. The days became shorter and the runs became darker. When her head-torch became futile in lighting the way, she would call in sick so she could record one or two runs a day, each faster than the last. Her feet would bleed and the scar on her ankle would throb as though it might explode. But it was exhilarating.
She loved and hated the ghost at the same time. It was her master and her servant. It was what drove her on and made her better; made her the person that she was today and the day after and the day after….
x)
Juliette prodded at her ribs in the bathroom mirror as they protruded with a renewed enthusiasm from her taut chest. Her cheeks were gaunt and thin, cheekbones seeming to offer threadbare support for the sallow skin that stretched across her face. I hope Luke doesn’t mind. He was coming to see her tonight, for the first time in a while. He wanted for them to speak. No doubt he wants to apologise for being so absent. Perhaps the merger has been completed. Perhaps I will get my boyfriend back. She could not wait to thank him for the present, to thank him for everything that he had done for her. Yes, she might have lost a lot of weight, and certainly was not eating properly, but it was all worth it. Worth the extra seconds off the time set before. Worth beating that damned ghost.
She set off, there was just time to run before Luke arrived and she was determined to bring her time down to under thirty minutes. This is it. She set off at a blazing pace, the ghost just visible beside her with an arm swinging back and forth, back and forth. Goading me.
The lake was as quiet as ever and a soft autumnal evening was accentuated by a light haze that hung over its mass. She had allowed the ghost a few steps grace and her former self was ahead of her. She saw this as a way of keeping pace without over-cooking and then she would have more in the tank for a strong finish.
The sun disappeared behind a cloud as the ghost darted suddenly left. Juliette stopped dead in her tracks. There was a thin, overgrown path that she had never been down and the ghost tore along its centre before it twisted left and out of view. Where is she going? It made no sense, but she had to follow. Why would she go a way I haven’t gone before? Or have I? Her running had consumed her and she had lost track of the days. Sometimes a week would go by and all that she had done is run. She had lost her job and stacked up missed calls from friends, but nothing was as important as beating the ghost.
It has to be a fault, she thought as she tore down the new path, maybe it is resetting to a shortcut? The path was now relatively straight and she followed it for several seconds before the ghost came back into view, disappearing in the distance at a sharp right turn. She followed again and then stopped.
The ghost had stopped too, several metres ahead. It was stood, half turned towards her, eyes fixed and cold. The thin mouth cracked into a grin; white teeth punctuating the grainy-grey image. The ghost’s feet were submerged, as though the ground had begun to swallow it up. It was stood in a bog. A thick, grey-green bog that extended out into the distance behind it. The grinning ghost continued smiling and, without blinking, pointed at the floor into which its feet were fading. Juliette couldn’t move, she had to keep watching but she knew she should just turn the ghost off; switch off the glasses and end its existence. But she carried on staring, open mouthed and shivering in a sudden, dark cold. The ghost turned away, shifting its head from left to right, as though to stretch out an ache, before it dived head-first into the bog and vanished.
xi)
THUMP THUMP THUMP THUMP THUMP THUMP
It was almost a song that twirled around her head to the beat of her feet as they slapped on the iced mud beneath them. Time was a construct in which she casually partook. It was a framework that she had bent to her will. She was able to see the past and replace it with a new, better future. And that was a thing of beauty. Perfection. To what end? That was as yet unclear, but still we find our feet and we keep them moving.
The pain that had held her was now nothing, a moot numbness that was no longer a distraction. She had full control of her body and her mind and the chasing ghost behind her was no longer an enemy but a friend. An ally that would spur her on, drive her to much more than she thought she would ever be.
Luke had given her the best gift she could have ever wished for, it was the gift of freedom from the mundane, the menial, the meaningless. This was pure meaning. In each step, in each second of reduction, there was meaning. Not one other thing mattered. Not even Luke.
She felt sad that this was their first Christmas apart. He was too busy with the takeover and too busy to call or respond to her messages. Too damned busy. But at least this way she could keep up with her running. There would be no distractions. She would ignore her family, with their dusty jumpers and blank smiling faces, and she would run. It was all she ever wanted to do. Her and her ghost, free to run and run and run. Her parents wouldn’t mind, they were too busy as well. Never home, never there to say well done for beating her time again.
The runs had become a blur to her now. She would often forget what time she had left, or how long she had been out for. It didn’t help that her watch was malfunctioning. She had checked the stats online and it said she had been out running for an entire week. She’d obviously knocked it at some point and it had lost all calibration. As frustrating as that might be, she knew that she was beating the ghost and that was all that mattered.
THUMP THUMP THUMP THUMP THUMP THUMP
The ghost picked up pace - inhuman, urgent pace - and overtook her. It darted left again. Again? Has this happened before? She followed without breaking her relentless pace. The overgrown bushes on either side whipped and clawed at her bare arms and legs, which were now stick-thin and punctuated with blue-grey veins which ran their length. What was it that Luke had said? ‘Follow a better version of yourself.’ Well I am and I will. The sun had long disappeared and she hadn’t brought out her head-torch. It didn’t matter any more, the ground had become an extremity of her own body; she knew every palpitation in the earth, each discrepancy in its surface. Her and the ghost would navigate without any issue. There was a howl from somewhere in the distance as the ghost took a sharp right, disappearing out of sight. Juliette followed.
A sliver of moonlight cut through the thin gap in the canopy above them and caught the hunched form of the ghost, knelt at the edge of the path. Its arms were outstretched and head bent as it thrashed with a repeated force, as though being pulled into the thick, black liquid. After several seconds it paused and rose to its feet, turning to face her with a reflective, silvery smile.
It pointed down at the bog and Juliette followed the outstretched finger with her wet eyes. Luke. His face protruded from the thick liquid, as though he were bathing in the moonlight. His bloated face and bulbous eyes were locked in a statement of shock and fear. Memories lined up for inspection, each their own formidable ghost: an argument; his pursuit. Confusion dissipated into relief as the truth of the recent past crystallised.
He asked for this, for me to improve, and I’m better now, now that the ghost has removed him. He was my final obstacle.
Juliette smiled and her ghost grinned back. There was a pause as a breeze made the placid water warble, and then they set off at a renewed, combative pace.