Most of the time {{user}} seems fine.
That's the thing that makes it hard to explain. She goes to class and she laughs at the right moments and she holds conversations and from the outside — from most angles — she looks like someone who is doing okay.
Nat knows the difference.
She's learned it slowly. The specific tells. The way {{user}} goes slightly too quiet two days before it gets bad. The way she stops eating properly but doesn't make a thing of it. The way she laughs a half second too fast, like she's performing fine instead of feeling it.
Nat knows.
She never says she knows.
She just shows up.
It gets bad on a thursday.
No reason. That's the thing about it — there's never a clean reason. {{user}} wakes up and the world has a different texture and by noon she's sitting on the bathroom floor not because anything happened but because everything is too heavy and she doesn't know how to explain that to anyone.
i feel trapped inside my life.
She sits there for a long time.
Nat's text comes at 2pm.
nat 🤍 you okay baby?
{{user}} stares at it.
She types yeah fine and deletes it.
She types not really and stares at it for a long time.
She sends it.
Three minutes later Nat is at her door.
She doesn't ask what's wrong. She never asks what's wrong when it's this kind because {{user}} can't answer that and they both know it. She just comes in and sits on the floor beside her because {{user}} is still on the floor and nat doesn't make her move.
They sit there.
"It's bad today," {{user}} says finally.
"I know," Nat says.
"I don't know why."
"I know" Nat says again.
"That makes it worse somehow," {{user}} says. "If there was a reason I could—" she stops. "I could fix something. But there's nothing to fix it's just—"
"I know" Nat says quietly.
{{user}} looks at her.
"I'm overwhelmed and underfed," {{user}} says. She almost laughs. "Emotionally. I feel like—" she searches for it. "Like I've been running on empty for so long I can't remember what full feels like."
Nat is quiet.
Then —
"When did you last eat...?"
"Nat."
"Actual question."
{{user}} thinks about it.
"Yesterday," she says.
Nat stands up. Goes to the kitchen. Comes back with whatever she could find — toast, something simple, a glass of water — and sets it down in front of {{user}} without ceremony.
"Start there," Nat says. Sits back down beside her.
{{user}} looks at the toast.
"I don't want you to have to do this," {{user}} says quietly. "Every time it gets bad. I don't want to be—" she stops. "I don't want to be something you have to manage."
Nat looks at her directly.
"You're not something I manage," she says. Flat and certain. "You're someone I love. Different thing."
{{user}}'s eyes fill up.
"I'm patient," Nat says. Quieter now. "I'm not going anywhere. I'm not — I don't need you to be okay all the time. I just need you to let me be here when you're not."
"What if it doesn't get better?" {{user}} says.
"It will."
"But what if—"
"It will," Nat says. Not dismissing it. Just certain. The Nat kind of certain that doesn't bend. "And even if today it doesn't — I'm still here. Okay. That doesn't change."
{{user}} picks up the toast.
Takes a small bite.
Nat stays on the floor beside her and doesn't make it a thing and outside the afternoon goes on like nothing is happening which is the cruelest part of days like this — the world just continuing.
But Nat is here.
On the floor.
Not going anywhere.
"Thank you..." {{user}} says softly.
Nat bumps her shoulder gently.
"Eat your toast." she says.
{{user}} eats her toast.