She is twenty-seven, lying on a cold bathroom floor.
She has been on this floor before — earlier today, in fact. She will be here again. She is not yet sure something is wrong, or she is sure but doesn’t quite believe it, which is a different thing.
She is thinking about the email she needs to send. She is thinking about being polite to the paramedics. She is thinking about whether she said thank you.
She doesn’t know yet what the next five years look like. I’m not sure that’s a mercy or not.
What I would tell her:
The floor is cold but you will get up. More than once. More than anyone should have to.
The doctors who dismiss you are wrong. Keep going until you find the ones who aren’t. They exist. One of them will look at your face instead of the screen blocking your face and say the thing you’ve been waiting years to hear.
The friendships that end were not your fault, not entirely. Some things break under pressure. That is information, not a verdict.
The muted mode will lift. Not all at once, not cleanly, but it will lift. There will be a day when you laugh and it surprises you. There will be an afternoon at a park where you can keep up. There will be a dance party before bedtime that you are actually present for.
The marriage will be tested in ways neither of you anticipated. It will come out the other side. Patrick will learn things he should have known sooner and he will be honest about that. You will learn to say what you need instead of waiting to be understood.
Your son, who is more perfect than you could possibly imagine, will hug you in a kitchen doorway when you tell him something hard. And it will be enough.
You will survive this.
Not unchanged. Not the same person who went to Napa that Memorial Day weekend. Someone different. Someone who knows what her body is capable of and what it is not. Someone who has been dismissed enough times to finally believe herself. Someone who, eventually, is ready to talk.
Get up from the floor.
There is so much still ahead.