They say a human can go three days without water. Three weeks without food. Three minutes without oxygen before brain damage starts. Three, that seems to be the magic number. Three is also the number of strikes you have in baseball. The number of times it took Goldilocks to find the right bed. Three months without hope until you die of depression. List three things for a better chance at remembering them. Blood, sweat, and tears- three. Gold, glory, and god- three. Everything comes individually with another pair. Three pigs for a wolf to eat, three goats to cross a bridge. Father, son, and holy spirit. Even three in the bible. Three seems to be always surrounding us even if we don't know it. 

But three was also when I had my first trauma. I broke my head open and fractured every bone in my face and neck. I remember seeing the ambulance outside my front door. Three is how many bones I broke in my car accident. I was hit by a drunk driver. I have panic attacks now. Three is how many great aunts and uncles I have seen die. Three is how many disorders I have. I have three older sisters. Julius Caesar even knew three, friends, Romans, and countrymen. 

Grade three is when I moved schools and houses. That started a whole new chapter in my life. I've had three boyfriends. They all taught me a different lesson. Boys cause a lot of problems for me, most men seem to cause me despair. Three is how many events I swim in a meet. Also how many friends I have lost. Three is a past, present, and future. A story has a start, a rise, and an end. You start in elementary school, then middle, then high school. You date someone, then get engaged, then you get married. Every event, everything is in threes. 

Three is my favorite number. It keeps me sane and it keeps me alive. Three is how many heartbeats I count for my OCD-induced panic attacks.  An imaginary piece of food bubbles up inside my throat causing me to choke, my breath slows and heaves. Choking on water, choking on something. No, I don’t even have a throat. I only have a brain and a stomach. Both are seizing and ready to burst. My back quenches up in order to prepare for an attack from behind. It is reliving nightmares from my childhood. My neck throbs and I turn it to one side, my whole body clenches waiting for horror. Count - one, two, three. My jaw tightens, my toes flex, the feeling of pure horror wraps around my body. There's a snake wrapping its cold scaly body around me. I feel its coils looping from the bottom of my legs. The coldness of its skin is somewhat of a relief compared to the boiling lava flowing through me. Count - one, two, three. The obsessive compulsions rise out of the depths and make everything inside and around me uneven. My muscles quiver and stretch in order to bring a slight sense of relief. There is no oxygen in the universe, there is only poison. My world is ending and every trauma in my body encapsulates me. Happiness and good are nonexistent and are only a mirage. The world is filled with hate, anger, racism, sexism, and everything horrible. Ghosts and villains swallow my brain into a pit of misery. Abuse and manipulation are at the forethought of my brain and it tells me my past, present, and future. Failure. I am a failure. The world is a failure and all I can do is fail. No success, no A's, only F’s, and less than nothing. Count - one, two, three. 

I have three A’s in my name. There are also three A’s in the words panic attack. I have twenty-one total letters in my name - three times seven is twenty-one. My middle name is Kay. 

My favorite sport to watch is hockey. There are three periods in a game. I have played piano my whole life, a chord has three notes. I am an avid reader. One of my childhood favorites was the Three Blind Mice. My favorite Disney movie is Aladdin. Genies always grant three wishes. My childhood was far from perfect, and I spent a lot of time trying to forget the world around me. Now I am older, almost an adult. In European history, I am learning about the French Revolution. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness is what the revolutionaries fought for. 

Every day I count one, two, three. I inhale, I keep the oxygen allowing it to flow through my cells, and I exhale. One, two, three, three is all I need to get through the day.