January:
“Nothing is permanent,” he whispered to her, just before shoving his hands in his pockets and walking back to his car.
“Why?” she shouted back. “What did I do for you to leave behind a forever?”
He ignored her, climbed into the driver’s seat of his car, and slammed the door shut.
He glanced at her one more time before cranking the engine awake and throwing the car in reverse.
“Promises aren’t permanent,” she mumbled under her breath, watching his headlights fade down her abandoned street.
She sighed and watched her breath form puffs of white in the chilled air and fade.
Deep breath in, deep breath out, puff of white, fade.
When shivers began to shake her hands, she headed inside her house.
The rooms were completely dark. She had been gone a few days with the man who was now her ex fiancé.
She walked throughout the house, switching on the lights as she went.
When she got to the living room, she saw the framed picture of the two together on their fifth anniversary.
She grabbed it from the coffee table and stepped back out into the cold night.
His headlights were gone, but she could still see where his car had been in the four melted portions of ice in her driveway. Soon those signs of him would be gone, too.
Throwing the picture into the snow, she decided to make his leaving easier.
She cried. She breathed in, she breathed out, puffs of white, fade.
March:
She got the call while she was at work. Her mother had been in an accident, a car accident, on her way to work.
Rushing off to the hospital, she cursed the god so many claimed to believe in. She sobbed. She breathed in, she breathed out, and the tears came rushing down her cheeks.
Once she got to the emergency room, she told the nurse at the center desk her name, and the nurse led her back to the room.
“Her condition isn’t stable,” whispered the nurse, glancing sadly at this caring daughter.
Her mom was tied up to so many machines. She could see the heart rate monitor pulsing beside her mother’s bed.
It beeped, it beeped, it jolted to a stop.
May:
With her cap and gown, she ascended the stairs, following behind her peers, to her college diploma.
“Congratulations,” the dean whispered to her, as she shook her hand and gave her the paper.
With her cap, gown, and diploma, she descended the stairs, following behind her peers, to her future.
A future uncertain, like all futures she guessed. But this future felt different. It felt more blind than the past. It felt like she was not only blind but deaf and mute too.
Pomp and circumstance rang out as they walked out of the stadium.
She kept pace, head high, as the sound faded.

August:
She had always wanted to do this. Ever since she had the feeling that something in her head was wired differently from how it should be, she knew she wanted some kind of help.
Now, entering this weird adult world, she could do something about it.
Walking into the therapist’s office, her heart was beating out of her chest, but as the warm-smiled therapist comforted her, she calmed down.
The butterflies within her stomach flapped slower and slower until they danced around her and flew away.

October:
Being on medication was a weird feeling. It was weird because it wasn’t. Whenever she had thought of medicine for her anxiety before, she imagined feeling an intense change in mood.
But her medicine wasn’t like that. At least, not for her. It was more like she had finally found where she was supposed to be. Her natural state.
The anxiety wasn’t completely gone. Neither was the depression.
But as days and weeks continued to take their steps past, she felt the fire of it all slowly become extinguished.

December:
She came home to her empty house right after work on New Year’s Eve. She unlocked the door, hands numb just from seconds in the cold.
She walked around her house, flipping on lights and the television as she went.
The annual countdown to the new year was down to its final moments.
“Nothing is permanent,” she said, smiling.
One breath in, one breath out, the year faded.
And she was glad.