In need of a transition from the weekend’s errands, family time, workouts, and scarce relaxation, I decided to take a walk around the block on Sunday night. The air was thick and quiet with solstice heat. Summer has a certain smell that I only notice in the first few days of it—a mix of sweat and sulphur and 10 pm sun.
I’m passionate about exercise, and this is how it always starts: just one walk around the block at sundown. About 1,000 steps. But 40 minutes and a T-shirt soaked in sweat later, I’m reminded that although I haven’t had a drink in eight years, I’m still hooked on escape—tonight, it’s exercise. It’s where I’m my best. It’s where I remind myself of how weak and strong I am, interchangeably and sometimes simultaneously.
Spring is gone, and summer is salvaged. It’s been a long haul. Winter was tough, but if last year was any indication, summer is the time when COVID-19 numbers are low on Vancouver Island. This summer will be the time of socialization and nourishing a normal that pokes its familiar, malnourished head around the bend.
I have a tendency to misinterpret and mistrust all things overly simplistic, especially when they hold us together, and the sanctions surrounding the pandemic are no different. So I need to remind myself that you can’t go through med school in a single day.
Yes, this time last year, case numbers on the island were low. But this time is different. There is no warning for fall; there is only optimism. That doesn’t change our haggard hope or our somewhat distorted visions of any life at all.
On my walk, I passed a small Italian art-deco house with plenty of windows; the walls were full of hipster art, dorm Christmas lights, and underground rock band posters. People, at least 25 or 30 of them, were inside. Someone stumbled out of the doorway, yelling and laughing that someone named Bryan should “get his own fucking beer.”
In a split second, my mind flashed back eight years to a hot star-hazed, booze-crazed night—one of many.
There are numerous times I’ve thought I was out of the woods throughout these eight years. Then that one or two times a year hit where I want to drink so ferociously that I can feel chilled vodka burning my esophagus and bubbling in a bloated gut.
But that used to happen every day. A lot can change over time. There is a hope in the tones of conversations these days that this all may be, finally, once and for all… gone.
History repeats itself, so here’s to what may turn out to be the roaring ’20s all over. Enjoy yourself. Enjoy the summer.
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