I remember sitting at the top of the stairs. I remember the feeling: Heart beating impossibly fast, unable to find my breath, nausea, sweating and an all-encompassing anxiety that slowed down time to a crawl. It was fall 2002. I was 17, a senior in high school.

At the bottom of the stairs, my mother sat in a chair in front of a boxy old computer monitor, typing away. I’d written out what I would say and how I would say it, furiously revising dozens of times. I’d rehearsed it in my mind more times than I could count—on the bus to school, in the shower, at the mall.