It's b******* to think of friendship and romance being different. They're not. They're just variations of the same love. Variatons of the same desire to be close.

We always see our worst selves. Our most vulnerable selves. We need someone else to get close enough to tell us we’re wrong. Someone we trust.

Here's what I think. We all want someone to build a fort with. We want somebody to swap crayons with and play hide-and-seek with and live out imaginary stories with. We start out getting that from our family. Then we get it from our friends. And then, for whatever reasons, we get it in our heads that we need to get that feeling- that intimacy- from a single someone else. We call if growing up. But really, when you take sex out of it, what we want is a companion. And we make that so damn hard to find.

But I think we both knew, even then, that what we had was something even more rare, and even more meaningful. I was going to be his friend, and was going to show him possibilities. And he, in turn, would become someone I could trust more than myself.

There's no way for them to take away my sadness, but they can make sure I am not empty of all the other feelings.

I can take everything on her face at face value, and that's valuable in a friend.