But how could I have been a good best friend – or girlfriend, or daughter – when I was so busy balancing the different parts of myself that I never got to actually be myself?

Saying what if never helped anyone. You can’t undo the bad things that have happened. Pain cannot be avoided, but it can be accepted.

Maybe I have to stop trying to be one thing or another. Maybe I need to accept the ways I contradict myself. Maybe that’s what it is to be human.

We can’t keep the people we love alive by putting our own lives on hold. In fact, we can’t put our lives on hold at all. Time marches on, even when we don’t want it to.

Our convesation is awkward, as though our friendship is another skill that I remember but can’t use anymore.

Whoever she is, and however close we become, my history will never be all twisted up with hers.

But then there she is, on her own, chewing gum, pulling her hair back with one hand and getting her MetroCard out with the other. Girls can do so much at once.

It’s 7:42 on a Tuesday when the phone rings. I only notice the time because I’m watching Wheel of Fortune, which is so boring that I think I might be better entertained if I turned off the TV and stared at the blank screen.

And I know that I would never, not in a million years, be kissing her like this with my hands in those places, if she hadn’t told me that I had moves, that I was smooth.

Before that, I listened to music as loud as I could, like I thought I could drown the pain out.