My home shrinks in the car's rear-view mirror as I reach to turn down the radio. Silence—something that I hadn't experienced in five and a half years. I felt the string cut between us in that moment. I know this is the end. I turn off our gravel road onto the pavement, and it feels like justice. The light flowing through the trees into my windshield feels like they are whispering to me to keep going. As I turn the steering wheel, my ring catches the autumn sun. Rolling down my window, I fumble trying to get it off my finger. Freeing it from me, I hurl it into the bushes. My cheeks warm, and my eyes sting, but I laugh. Tears flow down except in the most freeing way. I haven't cried, laughed, mourned, or had any emotion in so long. I have no clue where I am going. The purse beside me holds my life-- eight hundred dollars.

My eyes lock in the mirror, I am going to be okay.