Some things that happened have a fix, or at least a path towards one. Other things are just gone. I want to name those honestly rather than pretend everything is recoverable, because I don't think it is.
The version of speaking I used to have
Before all of this, my selective mutism was situational — narrower, more predictable, still there but not covering as much ground. What I have now is broader. I don't know if that fully comes back to what it was. Maybe it does, over time. Maybe some of it doesn't. Either way, the version of communicating I had before isn't something I can just decide to have again. It's not there right now, and I can't will it back.
A normal school year
I'm never getting that back. Whatever an ordinary version of this year could have looked like — normal ups and downs, the usual stuff, nothing like what actually happened — that year doesn't exist anymore and never will. It got replaced by the actual one. There's no do-over for a specific stretch of time. It's just gone, and what happened instead is the only version that exists now.
Trust in that particular kind of institution
I don't think I trust schools, or institutions that operate like schools, the way I did before any of this. That's not something I can just decide to feel differently about. The evidence I have now is that the systems that were supposed to protect me didn't, repeatedly, and that's not information I can unlearn. Whatever trust existed before is genuinely gone, replaced by something more cautious and more accurate, but also just less.
The straightforward version of being a teenager
Whatever an uncomplicated version of this period of life could have looked like — I don't get that one. What I have instead is more complicated, has more weight to it, involved things most people my age haven't had to process. That's just the actual version of events now. I can build a good life around it. I can't undo it having happened.
Naming it without needing to fix it
I'm not writing this looking for a solution. Some things don't have one. Naming what's actually gone, clearly, without pretending it's all recoverable, feels more honest than forcing a hopeful ending onto something that doesn't have one yet. Maybe it will, eventually. Right now it's just loss, and I'm allowed to call it that.