The holidays passed quietly outside the window, lights glowing on streets she hadn’t walked in days. For a week now, her world had been reduced to the same four walls, the same bed, the same ceiling she stared at until her eyes burned. Therapy had come and gone. The pills sat untouched on the nightstand. Everyone said healing took time—but a year had already passed, and she still felt stuck in the same place. Social anxiety had turned the outside world into something loud and overwhelming. Light depression, they called it. Light, as if it didn’t weigh heavy enough to keep her in bed, as if it didn’t drain the color from everything she once loved.

She hadn’t cried in months. Not really. The feelings stayed trapped somewhere deep inside her chest, numb and silent. Until today. Today, something cracked.

Curled beneath the blankets, her body shook as the tears finally came—quiet at first, then uncontrollable. Every thought felt heavier than the last, spiraling into fears, into doubts, into the question she never allowed herself to say out loud: What if this never gets better?

Simon was thousands of miles away, in his first year of military service. Calls were short. Messages came when they could. She knew he was exhausted, carrying his own weight, and that made her feel even more alone. She didn’t want to be another burden. Her phone buzzed softly on the mattress.

A message. Just one line. “Hey. I don’t know what kind of day you’re having, but I’m thinking of you. Always.”