When Clara first stood in front of the stairs in her own house, she felt as if the steps were mocking her. She was out of breath by the second flight, her legs were shaking, and her heart was pounding so hard that she had to hold on to the banister. She was only 36, but her body seemed to have betrayed her.
‘I’m just tired,’ she told herself.
But the fatigue did not go away.
The doctors spoke calmly, almost indifferently:
‘You need to lose weight, Clara. Your heart can’t cope.’
She smiled back at them, but cried when she got home. Because it wasn’t just a ‘weight’ problem. It was loneliness, endless work, the eternal ‘I’ll start on Monday.’
That day with the stairs became a turning point. Not the end — but the beginning.
At first, she just walked around the house. For five minutes. For ten. Then around the block. People from neighbouring houses greeted her with slight pity: ‘Well done, she’s trying.’
A week later — one kilometre less to breathe.
A month later — one size less.
After three months, she lost her belief that ‘nothing will work out.’
She changed everything gradually. She removed sweets from the fridge. She stopped looking at the scales and started looking at the sky. Every day she wrote a phrase on the mirror:
‘One more step and you’re closer.’
Sometimes it was difficult. Sometimes she wanted to give up. Once in winter, returning from a run, she fell in the snow and cried right in the middle of the road. Then a boy of about ten years old approached her, held out his hand and said:
‘You’re doing great. My mum says that if a person falls, it means they’re moving forward.’
She remembered those words forever.
A year passed. Clara was standing in front of that same staircase again — only now it wasn’t at home, but at a city marathon, where the finish line was on the roof of an old building, forty metres above the ground.
The crowd was noisy, someone was waving flags. Clara felt her heart beating fast again — but now it wasn’t from fear. It was from happiness.
When the climb began, her muscles burned and her breath faltered, but she didn’t stop. And then — the last step. Her legs were shaking, but she wasn’t walking — she was running.
The people on the roof applauded.
She raised her arms and laughed.
Not because she had lost weight.
Not because she had won.
But because she had returned to the person who believed in ‘one more step.’
