My room became my whole world. I would wake up, stare at the ceiling, watch the sliver of light move across the wall as the day passed, and then it would be dark again and I'd failed another day at being alive.
The blinds were always closed. I told people I was fine. I wasn't fine. Severe depression had me locked in a room that felt like a coffin — except coffins are quiet and my head never was.
Six months in, my sister showed up unannounced. She didn't lecture me. She just sat on the floor with me. Eventually she said, "Come outside for five minutes. That's it." I said no. She waited. I said no again. She waited more. I went outside.
The sun felt like an accusation. I hated it. But I stood in it for five minutes.
Three days later I walked to the end of the block. Not running. Walking. Slowly. Like a person learning to use their legs again.
The first run was 200 meters. I had to stop and sit on a curb because my legs were shaking. I cried the whole way back. My neighbor's kid stared at me from his bike. I didn't care.
I ran 200 meters the next day. And the next. The distance didn't matter. The showing up did.
There's something about movement that medication alone couldn't give me. Not because meds are bad — they were essential, and I still take them — but because running gave me something to do with the grief. It gave the pain somewhere to go. My body remembered what my brain had forgotten: that it was capable of hard things.
I run half marathons now. Not fast. Not impressive by anyone's standards except mine. Every mile is a conversation with the person I was in that room, a reminder that he is still in me, but he doesn't run my life anymore.
My sister comes to my races. She stands at the finish line and doesn't say "I told you so" because she doesn't have to.
Two hundred meters at a time. That's how you get out of the room.