I was not a runner. I had never been a runner. I’d joined a gym once, went four times, and paid the membership fee for eight months out of some misplaced optimism. Running was something other people did. Serious people, with the right shoes and a playlist and somewhere to be.
I started the week after my divorce was finalized. Not because I wanted to get fit, not because someone recommended it. I started because I was sitting with nothing to do and so much noise in my head that I couldn’t think straight.
What nobody tells you about divorce is what to do with your body. Your mind is chaos — thoughts, regrets, fears, anger all competing for space. But your body still wakes up at the same time every morning. It still needs somewhere to put all that restless, directionless energy. In my marriage I had structure. Routines that kept me moving through the day without thinking too hard. When that disappeared, I felt empty.
The first few weeks it was just hard and uncomfortable and I spent most of it breathing badly and thinking about how much I’d rather be doing something else. But there was something about the simplicity of it that I needed. Somewhere around week four, something shifted. I started going further without planning to. I stopped watching the clock.
I’d leave the flat in a bad mood and come back in a different one — not fixed exactly, but quieter. I’m not particularly fast, even now. I don’t race. I don’t track my pace or care about my splits. I just go out most mornings, move through the world for forty minutes, and come back slightly more capable of handling whatever the day brings. It had nothing to do with fitness. It had everything to do with making me feel good.
If you’re going through something hard right now and someone tells you to exercise, I know how hollow that advice sounds. I rolled my eyes at it too. But what I’d say instead is this — find something that is just yours. Something with no history attached to it, no memories, no version of your old life wrapped up in it. Something you do only for yourself, at your own pace, on your own terms.
Hasib Afzal