Monday was a day of huge leaps of recovery for my friend. The drugs she took seem to have pretty much cleared out of her system on that day, and since then she’s been talking, and crying, and walking a little, and slowly but surely getting her strength back. She was able to use the phone yesterday, and we had the chance to talk for about half an hour. She sounds and seems like her usual self, but she’s still got a very long road ahead of her. Some of the things we talked about were heart-wrenching.

I found myself feeling guilty that I hadn’t found her earlier. She had been lying there not for an hour or two like I had guessed, but for more than a day. That broke my heart. Someone told me this morning that “you never know what good is going to come out of all this,” and while it may feel like a hollow platitude, at least it’s better than some of the strange or even hurtful things people have already said to me.

I finally got the chance to talk with CincinnatiFriend, whose opinions I value more than anyone’s, especially in matters like these. She put it into perfect perspective by saying that the only people we can help are the people who want to be helped. If they’re intent on harming themselves, they’ll find ways to do it, and they can be very crafty about hiding the warning signs. She also said, essentially, that the only way we can deal with difficult things is to do what we can with the information that we have available to us. Hindsight is always 20/20, and we shouldn’t use our newer knowledge to beat ourselves up later.

The biggest truth of all, though, is that I’m just incredibly thankful that my friend is alive, and that she’s in the right place, both geographically and emotionally, to get the help that she needs.