366 days ago, the php program I was in here in my home state had decided they couldn’t do enough for me, and so I begrudgingly embarked onward to the inpatient facility they’d referred me to, halfway across the country. I remember the drive to the airport. It was 4 am, I hadn’t slept a wink, and I was talking a mile a minute, promising my dad I’d eat breakfast before boarding my first flight of the day. I remember him getting my suitcase, which probably weighed more than I did at the time, out of the back of the car for me, and following me all the way to the TSA checkpoint, where we hugged and he stood and watched, to make sure I went through and didn’t back out at the last minute, and to make sure I made my promised stop at the Dunkin’ Donuts that stood feet from the end of the security line. While the man in front of me screamed at the barista, insisting on ordering “a BLACK coffee, WITH CREAM!!!”, I turned around, relieved to see that my father had finally left, leaving me feeling a tiny bit less guilty about the fact that my “breakfast” consisted of only a black coffee (actually black, no cream) and nothing more. I’ve done my fair share of traveling, and have no problem sleeping on planes, usually ceasing to be awake before we even leave the ground. But this was my first time traveling completely alone, and the destination was daunting. Without a single minute of sleep, the hour-long flight to Philadelphia and then the additional four hours before finally arriving in Denver on their own felt a million times longer than any crazy-long transcontinental flight I had ever been on. The highlight of my day was my 45 minutes in Philadelphia, where I somehow found time to use the restroom, take a quick snap of a funny sticker on the bathroom wall, and sprint my malnourished self and my over-stuffed backpack literally all the way across the airport, all while keeping my slightly-too-big Birkenstocks intact and on my feet. Out of the whole day. THAT. Was my highlight. Taking a piss in a crowded, dirty public bathroom and dizzily stepping onto the plane with mere seconds to spare. Yet somehow, this super not-fun day, is without a doubt the most clearly remembered out of these past 366. I arrived at ERC Denver and did everything I’ve done in any treatment facility: make friends, cry at the supplement table a few more times than I’d like to admit, cry in my therapist’s office probably as many times, create some emotional Spotify playlists and give them strange titles, and make some (very mediocre, at best) art and poetry that exists on papers still in a box in my closet. I also, a couple months in, ran away barefoot to go move in with a stranger in Denver, where I was surprised to find myself staying for almost 8 months, still writing shitty poems, working a couple odd jobs, and developing a fond love for this perfect stranger, until one day, he finally tired of me, and so I returned back home, where I sit today, writing more angsty poems and compiling more songs than I’ll ever have time to listen to, to remind me of how I’ve felt, what I’ve done, and who I’ve been in these past 366 days.