When Lin Yuan was twenty-five years old, he was diagnosed with moderate depression.
Before that, he just couldn't get out of bed, didn't want to eat, didn't reply to messages, and didn't answer the phone. He thought he was lazy, pretentious, and too fragile. He didn't know that he was sick.
The day Xiaobei broke down the door and came in, he had been lying in bed for eighteen days.
"You scared the fuck out of me," she said.
Then she took him to see a doctor, took medicine with him, and forced him to walk downstairs for ten minutes. Mom came from her hometown and didn't say anything. She just cooked, cleaned, and held his hand. Dr. Zhou told him that recovery is not a straight line, but a spiral. Allow yourself to be bad sometimes.
He started to remember small goals: go downstairs for ten minutes. Make a meal. Send a message to a friend.
He started looking through old photos, thinking about the days when he couldn't get out of bed - his sophomore year in high school, his sophomore year, and the year he got his first job. It turns out it didn't happen suddenly, it had been sustained for so many years.
The cracks have always been there. But cracks are also where light comes in.
This is a story about fall and rise, about how a person sees light in the cracks, about those who hold his hand and slowly grow their own strength.
Intention: A patient's path to healing from depression
