Well, I still remember what they told us when we started on the Boehm flute, that it will take a couple of years before you can make a tone that sounds good to you, and several years more after that before you start sounding good to anyone else!
Building tone on flute is first waking up muscles in your face and lips that you've never had a reason to use before, then building up their strength over time, and finally, once they are there, responsive, and strong, building up muscle memory as you learn how to use them to produce a good, solid, efficient flute embouchure.
For some people it's quicker. I've noticed that people who spend a lot of time imitating accents and facial expressions make a much faster job of getting to a good sound, so I suspect these activities have already got those muscles awake and under some degree of conscious control.
There are a lot of rumors that fly around about why this person or that person shouldn't play flute, usually things like their lips are too large, but in my experience almost anyone, given time and motivation, can learn, as long as the muscles and facial structures are intact and there are no nerves cut (which, unfortunately, sometimes happens in the process of routine dentistry). And the "big lips" nonsense that gets repeated is patently false, check out any picture of jazz flutist Hubert Laws to see some huge lips, and then listen to any of his recordings to hear some really delightful fluting.
So my point being, if you didn't give yourself but a few months, then you gave up way too soon.
--James
Hopefully the breathing will come along -- it's partly something I never mastered, partly a matter of having played mostly traverso the last year and needing to get used to that honkin' embouchure hole that takes so damn much wind after laying off so long. That flute is an Olwell all-rosewood Nicholson, pre-serial-number.
Maybe in my next life.
On!
