lean personal

Lean personal. Helen's email has been sitting in me since seven this morning, two sentences, the second one four words, and I keep turning it over like a coin I dropped. Lean personal. I know what that means. It means the panic attack. It means they want the panic attack, or they want the version of me that had it, and those are not the same person and I don't know which one shows up in a room.

I told Miriam it was a memoir about a woman who ran marathons badly. She did not press. Miriam is the only person in London who does not press and I should buy her a drink but that would be suspicious. She'd ask why and I'd have to make a bit of it. I'm so tired of making bits of things.

The Northern line set went mixed tonight. Mixed. I cleaned the panic attack out of it. I thought cleaning it would make it tighter. It sounded like a man reading his own Wikipedia page. A man who used to have panic attacks. Past tense. Sold.

I walked home the long way, not past the canal. The canal is Pryce-territory now and I can't walk there and be a person who might audition for the BBC. Pryce would have known what to do with Helen's email. Pryce would have replied already. Pryce would not have slipped on the towpath in the first place, probably.

The knee throbs under the duvet. I am trying to decide which is worse — doing the panic attack set and being seen, or not doing it and losing the thing I want. Losing it is worse. I've known that since the room went small this morning and I knew exactly what she meant.