Dead Runs and Vitamin D

The breakup text sat on Sarah's phone like a bruise: *I think we're just roommates who happen to sleep together.* Three years, dissolved in twenty-seven words.

Sarah stood in the vitamin aisle at CVS, staring at the rows of promises in orange and white bottles. Vitamin D for mood, B-complex for energy, magnesium for sleep. She'd been taking them all for months, trying to supplement away the hollowed-out feeling that had settled in her chest like damp cotton. Her doctor called it burnout. Her therapist called it depressive episode. Sarah called it Tuesday.

"You're ghosting through your own life, Sarah."

Mark's words, from their last real conversation two weeks ago. He'd been right. She'd been zombie-walking through everything—the job she used to love, the friends she barely saw, the relationship she'd let atrophy through sheer exhaustion.

The bear of a situation at work hadn't helped. Morrison, the new VP, had been systematically dismantling everything Sarah's team had built over five years. Yesterday, he'd questioned her metrics in front of everyone, his voice dripping with that particular kind of condescension that made her want to scream or cry, but she'd done neither. She'd just nodded and taken notes, another day, another erosion of dignity.

Her phone buzzed again. Ben, her oldest friend, asking if she wanted to grab a drink. *Baseball game at Duffy's. Come decompress.*

Sarah found herself saying yes before she could talk herself into another night of takeout and Netflix.

The bar was loud, the game on a dozen screens. The Mets were down by three. Ben handed her a whiskey sour and didn't ask about Mark, didn't ask about work, just talked about his disastrous attempts at online dating and the pitching rotation.

"You okay?" he asked finally, when the game went to commercial.

Sarah swirled her drink. "I think I need to quit my job."

Ben nodded slowly. "You've looked like you're carrying the world for months now."

"I keep running from this thing," Sarah said, surprised by her own honesty. "This feeling that I'm supposed to be somewhere else, doing something else. But I don't know what that is."

The Mets scored. The crowd erupted. In that noise, something shifted. Sarah realized she'd been waiting for permission to feel again, to stop sleepwalking and actually live.

"Come running with me tomorrow," she said. "Six a.m."

Ben laughed. "I haven't run since college."

"Exactly. Neither have I." She finished her drink. "Let's start there."