You don’t expect things to go right, but then they do. You don’t expect things to go wrong, but then they do go wrong. You don’t expect a normal Tuesday afternoon to turn sour. You don’t expect a whole year to break. 

Yet, somehow, a whole year does break after you decide against moving the lid of a beef-jerky pot. 

It catches you off guard, so, when you smell the smoke, you assume it’s just melting plastic. 

But it’s not, and, when you discover the fire, you stand still in horror. The panic clouds your judgement, and you run around opening doors before you run outside with your dog. 

You scream for help and cuss quite a bit. Then, you curl up into a ball on the sidewalk. 

You don’t normally cry, your tears always trapped by a seam about to burst. Your tears press up against the seam, begging to be set free. The seam usually holds. 

But then the seam bursts, and you taste the salt trickling down your cheeks. There’s nothing to do but to drink your tears, look at the smoke billowing out of the shattered glass, and hope that it's just a dream.

But it’s not, and, when you wake up in a blow up mattress the next day, you die a little more as you realize what you did. 

And then you go to school. And you genuinely smile and awkwardly throw up peace signs as you tell people what happened. 

Then you break down crying in a Target parking lot with your dad as the only witness.

You stitch up your seam and make your way into the store. “Just get the necessities,” your dad proclaims. 

You know where you need to go, so you head off on your own. No, you aren’t heading towards the clothes. Or the makeup. Or the hairbrushes. You aren’t even heading towards the toothbrushes. You are heading to the toys section. 

You check each aisle, but you saw what you want in the first aisle. The baby toy aisle. You reach out, grab a pink stuffed bunny, and press it against your chest.

You find your parents and ask them to buy the bunny. Your dad agrees and, for some reason, also decides to buy two sets of AirPods. You think it’s weird he considered that to be a “necessity" over clothes, but it is nice to have AirPods. 

And then you go “home.” And you curl up under the sheets on the blow-up mattress. With your bunny in hand, you drift off to sleep. 

You begin to bring your bunny everywhere. 

Of course you bring your bunny to school everyday. Every. Single. Day. You bring your bunny so often that someone in your tap class decides to name her Clementine. You never call her Clementine, but that’s her name. 

She sits in your lap during every class. You hold her hand when you have to go to the counselor. You hug her. You squeeze her tight. You never let go. You can’t let go. 

You don’t want to be alone.

You don’t want to say “I’m scared.”

You don’t want to say “I feel like s***. I really, really need a hug.”

So you don’t say that. You just hug your bunny. You bring your knees up to your chest, bury your head, and hold your bunny in a desperate attempt to relieve the overwhelming pain. The overwhelming tension. The thing that makes you want to cry. That makes it nearly impossible to stand or sometimes even speak. 

But it’s fine. It’s fine. Nothing is wrong with you.

Except maybe something is. Just maybe something is wrong. 

Because you didn't expect a year to turn sour. But it did. It did, and it broke with your seam.