There was a friend you saw every day when you were little. They were the friend with whom you built forts, told scary stories (trying not to fall asleep first), and ran around in the neighborhood until you had to come in for dinner. All of the most thrilling, scary, confusing parts of growing up and navigating a world three sizes too big for you seemed manageable with them. Catching fireflies and wiggling around in sleeping bags, setting up a tent in your backyard, seemed like the stuff of a dangerous safari. You were sure you could catch a lion together, if only provided the proper equipment.

But things happened. You moved away, or they did, or seeing each other just got too hard. Even a simple change of school can do it. Before you know it, you’re an actual adult, and the person who knew you best for such an enormous part of your life—the only person with whom you share such an extraordinary quantity of childhood memories—is gone. 

There was the person who taught you how to love. The person with whom you felt more alive and real and full than you ever imagined possible, who seemed to love even the dark, ugly corners of yourself you were constantly trying to squirrel away. They licked your wounds and told you that you were beautiful. They took you on adventures that didn’t even require you leaving your house. Between the bedroom, the kitchen, and the plush, perfect couch, you existed in a kind of seclusion from everything else in the world. You didn’t need anyone else. You lost entire days kissing, talking, laughing in the car holding hands over the stick shift. You remember the things they showed you, things you were certain that no other human had ever been privy to. [Keep reading.]

Chelsea Fagan, from “Where Does Love God When It Dies?”